Franzoni's script for Gladiator was a revival of the sword-and-sandal genre, using characters very different from the original and drawing upon available historic and archaeological sources. He started to write the story in the 1970s, after reading the 1958 non-fiction book Those About to Die by Daniel P. Mannix, which detailed the Roman gladiatorial games.
For Amistad, Franzoni decided not to use a standard narrative, explaining, "the typical slant in this sort of film is to have the poor, chained black man arrive in the presence of the white guy, who has a good soul and fights the good faith to liberate the black man." Franzoni was also the one who convinced Steven Spielberg to direct the film.
Franzoni stated that the screenplay of King Arthur "aims more for history than myth," and again relied upon archaeological evidence in an attempt to create a more realistic human and political interpretation of the character.

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