The King's Speech originally started as the dream project of screenwriter David Seidler, who badly wanted to write a script about King George VI's struggle with stuttering. After decades—yup, decades—of research, Seidler created a script, which ended up in the hands of Bedlam Productions.

Seidler had written the script for the stage to focus on the relationship between King George and Lionel Logue, but the folks at Bedlam asked him to rewrite it for the big screen. These people then had a read-through of the script for a group of actors. One of these actors happened to be the mother of Tom Hooper, who would go on to direct. Apparently, Tom's mother called him up right after the reading and said, "I've found your next project."

So now things were rolling. Another company called See-Saw Films got involved to help turn the movie into a big production. But just nine weeks before filming was supposed to start, someone found (dun dun dunnn) the long forgotten diaries of Lionel Logue himself. So the writer Seidler wanted time to read these diaries and pull some quotes and info from them to include in the movie.

And just for good measure, the UK Film Council stepped up and gave the producers another million pounds to help cover the movie's production costs. Their investment would pay off, since the movie would earn international fame and end up paying back thirty-one pounds for every pound invested. Not too shabby for a movie about a speech teacher (and, oh yeah: a king.)