"How about King Kamehameha instead???"
That's even worse! Last year they were going to make a movie about Kamehameha starring Dwayne Johnson (aka the wrestler "The Rock"). The Hawaiian activists shot that down pretty quickly as disrespectful and racially insensitive to not consider using one of them as the lead (even though The Rock is half-Samoan).
Had they succeeded in getting "their guy" into the role, the next step would have been gaining artistic control over the script and story line. And then, a cut of the profits to support pet "heritage" projects.