Because the actual movie itself had over twenty writers to its credit, the screenplay gradually evolved over its sixty years in development, starting off as the classic over-the-top slapstick of the 1940's and ending with the nut-grindingly irritating over-the-top slapstick of the the 1990's. It began as a pet project of late-period Charlie Chaplin, who imagined the film as a sequel to his 1936 classic Modern Times. The movie, tentatively titled Modern Times 2: Electric Boogaloo, was intended as a silent release in the age of talking films, and thus had difficulty finding investors. When studio heads pressured him to change the format, Chaplin quit in disgust, selling the screenplay to a group of Russian bums he passed on the street outside the studio.