THE ‘SET’ OF JON FAVREAU’S Lion
King couldn’t be less impressive. It’s a big,
black room in a dull building in Playa
Vista, California. It looks like somewhere
more likely to host a zumba class than a
zebra herd. Yet within this room exist acres
of African land: lush jungles, scorching
desert, a big rock from which a baboon
dangles a baby. We just can’t see it yet.
It’s December 2017. Favreau is
remaking one of the most famous
animated movies ever and using mad
technology to do so. In this room exists a
‘virtual world’ in which Favreau is directing
his movie. He pops on VR specs and he’s
inside a computer-generated world where
he can set up any shot he can imagine.
He’ll use no on-screen actors nor motion
capture, no real animals, not even a single
blade of grass, but the finished result
should look so lifelike that David
Attenborough could wander on screen and
start telling you about the majesty of
warthogs without anyone batting an eyelid.
“I honestly don’t even know what to
call it,” says Favreau. “[Early on] the term
‘live action’ had been bandied about to
differentiate it from the expectations one
might have if you had heard it’s animated.
It’s not going to feel like you are watching
an animated film.” From the footage he
shows us, which looks like a prestige BBC
nature documentary but with chattier
animals, his aim has been achieved.
Favreau is aiming for more than just
visual difference in his second Disney
remake, following 2016’s The Jungle Book.
The Lion King is Disney’s biggest-ever
traditionally animated movie, scoring $968
million at the box office. It spawned a stage
musical that has grossed over $8 billion.
Audiences of all ages know Simba’s story
by heart. To change anything risks causing
fan uproar. Favreau hasn’t just made the
old Lion King with better fur. He’s
reinventing a classic. Be prepared.
THE STORY
In transforming The Lion King from cute
animation to photo-real film, Favreau saw
he would need to change large parts of the
story that were too ‘cartoony’. “We had to
deviate quite a bit from the [1994] film,” he
says, catching up with Empire in May 2019.
“If you look at the plot points, it tracks
pretty accurately to the old one... but if
you watched the films side by side you’d
realise they actually deviate a great deal.”
Some of those changes have meant
revising entire characters that don’t make
sense when you remove their cartoon look.
“The hyenas had to change a lot,” says
Favreau, meaning the comedy sidekicks
of the villain Scar. “They didn’t feel like
they matched up well with the photo-
realism. A lot of the stuff around them ❯