Jon Favreau To Direct A ‘Reimagining’ Of The Lion King
Hot on the heels of The Jungle Book, Cinderella, and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast, director Jon Favreau is reteaming with Disney to create a new version of The Lion King!
The term ‘live action’ has been passed about by various news sources, although that phrase is not mentioned in the official announcement from Disney, which makes sense. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Jungle Book all had human characters in them. The Lion King does not, so to call it ‘live action’ is possibly a bit of a stretch! However, it will utilise the techniques created for Favreau’s Jungle Book movie to bring ‘photo realistic’ versions of Simba, Timon, Pumbaa and the rest of the cast to life.
Choosing Favreau to lead the project makes a lot of sense. Not only did his Jungle Book make over $965 million worldwide, but there aren’t many other directors out there with his experience of using digital animals this way. Choosing to ‘reimagine’ such a Disney classic would have seemed like a dangerous move a few years ago, but with the huge success of Maleficent, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book, plus the high anticipation for Beauty and the Beast, it now seems the next logical step.
The original Lion King was released in 1994, and has gone on to gross $968.8 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest animated films of all time, and spawned a multi-award winning stage production. This new version will retain the Academy Award winning songs from Elton John & Tim Rice which featured in the original.
Favreau is also working with Disney to create a sequel to his recent Jungle Book film, however there is no release date for either movie as yet, but ‘hakuna matata’, as they say…
Damn it, now I have this stuck in my head…
https://youtu.be/xB5ceAruYrI
