Are you prepared for a live-action (or rather CGI) version of The Lion King? Here are four things it must do…
4. Look as good as The Jungle Book
This year The Jungle Book wowed audiences with its beautiful CGI rendering of the Indian jungle and all its inhabitants. To match the often breathtaking traditional animation of the 1994 movie, the new Lion King needs to have state-of-the art computer animation instead. That said, photo-realism is all well and good but they have to make sure the characters still have the personality of their old-fashioned counterparts.
3. Get all the same cast back
With most of Disney’s remakes, the originals are old enough that the cast have either retired from acting or passed away. Not so with The Lion King – many of its stars are still popular names today. There would be no point replacing the likes of James Earl Jones (Mufasa), Rowan Atkinson (Zazu), Nathan Lane (Timon) and Jeremy Irons (Scar) as they so perfectly nailed their characters in the past.
2. Adapt the stage version
To give it some purpose and originality, it would make a lot of sense for Disney to base the new film more on the smash hit Broadway version of The Lion King than the original film. With the extra songs and scenes the musical added in and the minor changes it made (for instance, Rafiki is a woman), audiences would at least be getting something slightly different from the film most of us know extremely well.
1. Somehow match the original
You may have detected by now that I am not exactly over the moon at this news. Now that it is happening, though, we have to accept it and pray that the makers will somehow match the majesty of the original film. In just 90 minutes, it squeezes in heartbreak, a lot of humour, romance, darkness and some of the best characters the Mouse House has produced. If they can recreate that in this new version then we will be able to say ‘Hakuna Matata!”
Fandom Factory 
Loved the Lion King so it better be good.
Have you noticed the evolution of Disney movies? They now do SO many Disney movies a year when they used to do a few every few years.
LikeLike
The Lion King’s my favourite Disney film so, yeah, it needs to be good to win me over.
I have! Just this year, we’ve had Jungle Book, Pete’s Dragon, Zootopia, Finding Dory. And Moana’s still to come. I suppose it’s clever – they make so many movies, it doesn’t matter if one or two of them flop.
LikeLiked by 1 person