In 1989 Lindsay Doran, a producer at Mirage Enterprises, suggested Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility during a brainstorm, and she had long wanted to adapt it. She chose it partly because it had two strong female leads. She hired actress Emma Thompson, who had never written a film script, after reading her comic sketches. Thompson spent five years writing, starting with a first draft of more than three hundred handwritten pages. Her early draft was criticised for delaying Edward until late, so she rebuilt the story to set up the characters properly. Studios were wary of a first-time screenwriter, but Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film. Doran then recruited Taiwanese director Ang Lee, who was not familiar with Austen but saw the social satire in her work and told the team he wanted to break people's hearts.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.