The Lion King (2019) (1 Viewer)

[Jake Lipson]

No, that is a common misconception but I saw the IMAX release in 2002 and it wasn't there; the film appeared exactly the way it appears on the Blu-ray. I think it was supposed to be, but they didn't have it done in time or something. In any case, the IMAX releases were kind of functioning as promotions for the DVD anyway, rather than the main event unto themselves.

Beauty and the Beast added a whole sequence which was originally intended to be in the film in 1991 but cut because they couldn't crack how to accomplish it until the Broadway version did. That one, I thought was a legitimate addition which added depth and perspective to the film (and it didn't replace any existing dialogue.) I think Disney saw that that one worked out well and then thought, "What can we add next to goose sales of the next one?", even though in TLK it wasn't creatively valuable.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Elton John is announcing his retirement from touring following a final tour:

http://deadline.com/2018/01/elton-john-retiring-farewell-yellow-brick-road-tour-1202268115/

I mention this here, rather than in the music forum, because the following quote jumped out at me.

This, he reassured, does not mean he will stop being creative. The Oscar, Tony and Grammy winner is currently working on a Broadway musical based on The Devil Wears Prada, as well as the Disney remake of The Lion King.

It's not clear if Deadline is assuming that he would write new material for the remake, or if they actually know that he is. As I think I mentioned earlier either here or in the Aladdin thread, back on July 18, 2017, Tim Rice tweeted in response to my question about the remakes:

Trying to find out if anything new is needed for new LK pic but info hard to obtain

At that point, I got mad, and (politely) tweeted to Jon Favreau suggesting that he and Tim Rice should meet to discuss the music. It's unfathomable to me that Tim Rice would find it hard to obtain info about the remake of a project for which he is the lyricist, since he should automatically be included in such discussions.

Anyway, I would hope that if Elton John is indeed back on Lion King, Tim Rice has to be back too. I'm not really sure if I should tweet him again with the same question, since I don't want to be a bother, but I care about them both being involved in this.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Here's a quote from Elton John about the music for the new film. Apparently we need to be prepared not to hear Be Prepared:

"There's going to be four of our songs in the film, from the original: Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, Hakuna Matata, I Just Can't Wait to Be King and Circle of Life. And then there will be an end, closing song, and we've been speaking to Beyoncé's people and hopefully Tim and I and her can cook up something. That's going out in 2019 as well. And it will be great to work with her. So we will see."

https://movieweb.com/lion-king-remake-2019-soundtrack-beyonce-elton-john-new-song/

Now, most people will take from this the headline that Beyonce is going to work with Elton and Tim on a new song. It doesn't surprise me that there will be a new song, and it also doesn't surprise me that they are bringing Beyonce in on that, since she is already there as the voice of Nala anyway. However, I think that the heavy implication that they are cutting Be Prepared overshadows this news, and I'm not happy about it. That, in combination with the earlier news that the hyenas are (either) being renamed or potentially cut suggests that they are making major changes to the villain side of things, and I'm really not on board with this.

We'll see how it goes, but I am not encouraged by this news.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'd almost rather have that song cut than to hear anyone other than Jeremy Irons sing it.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I'd almost rather have that song cut than to hear anyone other than Jeremy Irons sing it.

Well, actually, Jeremy Irons only sang half of it. Jim Cummings (who was already in the film as the voice of Ed and the "news from the underground" gopher) sang the second half of it for him.

But I see your point.

I just feel like it is an iconic part of the story and it would be inappropriate to remove it. Also, it is of course included in the Broadway show, so, other people have been singing it for 20+ years.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Good points. Not to argue but just to throw out some random ideas I had:

a) I never saw the Broadway show, and given the limited availability of Broadway tickets relative to the film's availability, I bet that's true of most people who saw the film
b) It's probably the least known song in the film - it seems entirely possible that it temporarily slipped Elton's mind when asked about it
c) They could be re-conceiving the role of the villain(s) in the film as well as the exact plotting, which could have eliminated the possibility of that song fitting in the film way back in the scripting stage

You know I'm not that thrilled with the idea of any of these live action remakes, but I would say that The Jungle Book was a little more successful to me than Beauty And The Beast because it was less slavish to its animated origin. Given that Jon Favreau is the director of both Jungle Book and Lion King, remaking the film beat for beat doesn't necessarily seem a priority of his, and given the massive amount of success he's had as a director for Disney (both for their live action and Marvel branches), he probably has a little bit of wiggle room on those things.

I didn't enjoy BATB '17 as much as JB '16 because the parts of it that were direct adaptations of the animated film were so directly copied that anything that was new just stuck out to me as being new (and frankly, not as good as everything around it). JB '16 seemed to be a little freer in how it was adapted. It was clear they wanted to hit certain benchmarks - Baloo's song, King Louie's song, Kaa threatening Mowgli - but that while they wanted to use some of the same ingredients as the animated film, they weren't slavishly following the exact same recipe. I'm not so sure that the corporate headquarters of Disney cares so much one way or the other, but I suspect that's partly Favreau's preference. If true, I think it's the right move.

Heck, maybe the folks at Disney realized that doing Be Prepared and that whole sequence with Simba getting lost and the hyenas threatening him and all of that would go from being cartoon scary to being "this is gonna get us a PG-13" scary when rendered not as hand-drawn animation but as photo-realistic CGI. The original Lion King animated film was rated G, but a lot of parents and parent groups at the time of its release felt that it should have warranted a PG given the intensity of the violence and death in the film, and that it got away with getting a G because of the Disney label. I would guess that the current filmmakers are aiming for PG, but even doing a straight live-action version of those sequences from the original film could yield a PG-13 if they're not careful.

All speculation, of course.

 

[Jake Lipson]

The fact that Elton said "four," and not "five," of the original songs is what especially suggests to me that Be Prepared has been cut.

I liked The Jungle Book as well, but i will be upset if The Lion King is as liberal as Jungle Book was. I think Beauty and the Beast is a good goal, since it retained the iconic elements from the original film, but was able to expand and deepen enough to feel like a new experience. Granted, I am much more attached to The Lion King than I am to the original Jungle Book. It's a tough balancing act, because I don't want it to be a shot-for-shot remake, and of course there has to be some new innovations, but if they start taking away the things that make it The Lion King, that's going to bother me. Be Prepared (and indeed the other songs too) are a huge part of the appeal to me, and always have been. Be Prepared in particular is such a visually inventive sequence that I would love to see how they update it for CG, if they were going to use it.

Your point about the relative inavailability of the Broadway version is well-taken and I can't argue with that at all except to say that the Broadway production, and its touring copies, are consistently among the highest grossers, even 20 years after the premiere. That means that, relative to other stage productions, The Lion King has been more successful than most, and certainly is the crown jewel in Disney's theatrical catalog. A lot of people I know who won't spend hundred of dollars on theater they don't know and aren't really theater people have gone to The Lion King, because it is The Lion King, and as we've discussed before, there is a comfort level there in that people know what they are getting when they go to that. The Broadway adaptation is also something Favreau should take into account when making the new film, since it contains all the iconic moments people want, but successfully expands the story to a two-and-a-half-hour format with new songs, deeper character moments and some new perspectives. If the remake is as good as the Broadway one in terms of respecting the original, that will be a win.

I also think you are right that the new film will be going for PG, and that the original would get a PG if it were submitted in its original form for the first time today. But again, the villains are an iconic part of the original to me, and I'll probably not like it if they are messed with to a large degree. I already don't like that Bonzi and Ed have been cut (or renamed, whichever is the case.)

 

[Jake Lipson]

Disney showed the entire Circle of Life sequence from the remake to exhibitors today at CinemaCon:

http://deadline.com/2018/04/dumbo-tim-burton-disney-cinemacon-1202375647/

As for Lion King, it’s shot for shot with the 1994 feature toon, but what a difference real animals (or what looks like real animals) makes. Baby Simba looks great, and there’s a shot of Rafiki rubbing his forehead with red dust and raising him to the other animals. A big cheer from the exhibitor crowd here in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Sad news today.

Mark Livolsi, the editor of the upcoming Lion King remake as well as many, many other movies, has unfortunately passed away at age 56. Rest in peace, sir.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...rs-prada-lion-king-film-editor-was-56-1149310

It's unclear if he was done with his work on Lion King or not, and if he wasn't, who will take over.

 

[Jake Lipson]

So yesterday, Jon Favreau tweeted this photo of himself, Donald Glover (adult Simba), Seth Rogen (Pumbaa) and Billy Eichner (Timon.) It seems to indicate that the actors are working together, which is interesting because they are normally recorded separately. And it would also indicate that work is ongoing on The Lion King even as Favreau is also doing the Star Wars series for the streaming service. And we can also deduce that if they're still recording stuff, Mark Livosi will probably need to be succeeded by another editor.

https://twitter.com/Jon_Favreau/status/1052709030110453760/

Now that Aladdin has a teaser which will obviously play on The Nutcracker and the Four Realm, I suspect we'll get one for this on Mary Poppins Returns in December.

 

[TravisR]

So yesterday, Jon Favreau tweeted this photo of himself, Donald Glover (adult Simba), Seth Rogen (Pumbaa) and Billy Eichner (Timon.) It seems to indicate that the actors are working together, which is interesting because they are normally recorded separately.

I like that because they're all comedians so they can improv and work off of each other.

 

[Jake Lipson]

 

[Sam Favate]

The trailer looks very impressive, but the movie is going to have to be more than a live-action recreation of shots in the original movie.

 

[JimmyO]

There's something about the look of CGI Simba that I don't like, and I can't put my finger on what or why.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I think this trailer looks exactly like you would expect a CGI version of The Lion King to look. Almost everything in this trailer seems like a recreation of the 1994 film. And yes, it looks very pretty, but it has yet to convince me that there is a significant narrative reason for it to exist. (Yes, I know it will make a ton of money; that's why I said narrative reason.) I mean, the biggest surprise in the trailer is that Seth Rogen is getting second billing as Pumbaa.

It sounds like Circle of Life is being recycled as-is from the 1994 soundtrack, and Mufasa's dialogue is nearly identical. "One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here and will rise with you as the new king" is only missing Simba's name, swapped out for a "but" which wasn't in the original. I believe they did have James Earl Jones do new recording sessions, but if the dialogue is going to be that close, they could have just pulled that out of the old one too.

It doesn't look bad at all. But this movie is in a tough spot. Change the original too much and people will get mad; don't change it enough and people will feel disappointed that there wasn't a new angle.

I'm not not excited. But the Aladdin teaser excited me more, because at least that revealed that Iago was going to be in the film, which we didn't know before.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The trailer looks very impressive, but the movie is going to have to be more than a live-action recreation of shots in the original movie.

Yeah, that's what I found startling: they essentially recreated in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within-style pseudo-live action CG the same framing and angles of the shots from the animated original.

With James Earl Jones back as Mufasa, I wonder if they're going to lift some of his dialog straight from the original film as well.

 

[Wayne_j]

I liked the trailer but it did look way too much like a shot by shot remake.

 

[SamT]

This is fascinating. Was Jungle Book a shot by shot recreation? I suppose not and that's why it was successful.

Recreating shot by shot the exact same frames might sound impressive but I think is a huge mistake. It will be a great negative if they made every shot like the animation and it just gives the very bad impression of being lazy and cheap. This way it is of course a lot quicker, easier. They basically used the original animation like a ready pre-viz storyboard.

They did a great thing with The Jungle Book but for this one it seems they got lazy or greedy.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Was Jungle Book a shot by shot recreation?

Absolutely not. The Jungle Book was nowhere near a shot-for-shot remake. Favreau made it into more of an action-adventure film, whereas the 1967 version is a far looser comedy with an extremely episodic structure.

However, The Jungle Book was released 49 years after Walt's original, which itself was an adaptation of a source text that had been adapted many times. Remaking The Lion King, which although it borrows from Hamlet and Bambi is not technically based on any particular source material, and doing it in the year that the original film turns 25, is a very different situation.

Like I said in my post earlier today, this film is in a rough position. There are a lot more expectations around what it is than with The Jungle Book. Change it too much and people will be mad. Change it too little and people will wonder why they bothered.

The Jungle Book, as something that has existed outside of Walt's animated version, is open to several different interpretations by its nature. The Lion King is essentially a perfect and definitive film as-is, so there's less need to deviate from it -- but also, if you don't, then the "why" question appears. So in choosing to remake it, Disney has taken on a decidedly different challenge than The Jungle Book, even though they're using the same director and the same technique.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I also wanted to point out that the final shots in the trailer of Mufasa saying "Remember" followed by Simba roaring are literally from the conclusion of the movie. The only thing after that is the Circle of Life reprise once the Pride Lands have become healthy again. This is a weird trailer inclusion to me -- of course we know how the movie is going to end, but I would still have preferred to see those particular shots at the end of the story for the first time, to earn them in a narrative sense, instead of seeing them in the very first teaser.

If showing a big chunk of Circle of Life wasn't enough for a teaser and they wanted a tag of something else, I wish they had given us a brief glimpse of Scar instead of showing us the literal end of the movie already.