Disney Adds Beyonce To Jon Favreau’s CGI Remake Of ‘The Lion King’
Disney has revealed Beyoncé will take the last key role in their upcoming “live action” remake of ‘The Lion King’ the studio has announced today.
Following on from Jon Favreau’s massive success with the remake of ‘The Jungle Book’, his next project for the money printing machine that is Disney will be a photo-realistic remake of their classic animation ‘The Lion King’. Whilst it’s being touted as a “live action” remake, unlike ‘The Jungle Book’, ‘The Lion King’ doesn’t actually have any human characters, but it will be all in the photo-realistic CGI style used in Favreau’s previous hit movie.
Beyonce will take on the role of Nala, the female lead opposite Donald Glover’s Simba. Other casting includes Chiwetel Ejiofor as evil uncle Scar, Seth Rogen as the warthog Pumbaa, Billy Eichner as meerkat Timon, John Oliver as the hornbill Zazu, John Kani (‘Black Panther’s King T’Chaka) as wise old mandrill Rafiki, Keegan-Michael Key (‘Key & Peele’) as Kamari, Alfre Woodard (‘Luke Cage’, ‘State of Affairs’) as Simba’s mother Sarabi, and – because who else could do it – James Earl Jones returns to voice Simba’s father, Mufasa.
Young Simba and Nala will be voiced by JD McCrary (‘The Paynes’, ‘I’m Dying Up Here’ and worked with Glover, aka Childish Gambino, on the song “Terrified”) and Shahadi Wright Joseph (‘The Lion King’ On Broadway) respectively.
Jeff Nathanson (‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge’, ‘The Terminal’) has written the script for this new iteration based on the original 1994 screenplay by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton. Unlike Favreau’s remake of ‘The Jungle Book’ which dropped most of the songs, as you can probably tell by the cast, ‘The Lion King’ will remain a musical.
‘The Lion King’ is due to arrive in cinemas on 19th July 2019.
