{"id":223268,"date":"2019-07-16T23:34:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T03:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=223268"},"modified":"2019-07-17T07:35:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T11:35:12","slug":"25-years-later-the-lion-king-roars-again-with-beyonce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/07\/16\/25-years-later-the-lion-king-roars-again-with-beyonce\/","title":{"rendered":"25 years later, ‘The Lion King’ roars again (with Beyonce)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE: Just Announced: “The Lion King: The Gift,” a new album of songs featuring global recording artists and steeped in the sounds of Africa, produced and curated by @Beyonce Knowles-Carter, will be released July 19. “Spirit,” the single from the album and from the soundtrack for The Lion King, will be available later tonight. (Photo<\/a>: @lionking\/Instagram<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LOS ANGELES \u2014 It was just a few months ago that director Jon Favreau was sitting in a scoring session with composer Hans Zimmer for \u201cThe Lion King,\u201d his ambitious and technology-driven reimagining of the 1994 animated classic, and he and everyone else in the room were getting a little emotional.<\/p>\n

It’s no wonder: They were recording the music for the stampede (yes, THAT stampede).<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking on it doesn’t make it any less emotional,\u201d Favreau said in an interview earlier this year.<\/p>\n

And don’t even get him started on what it was like to listen to James Earl Jones record his lines as Mufasa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lion King\u201d is three years in the making with some of the biggest names in\u00a0entertainment, including Beyonce, and the expectations couldn’t be higher. None of the other major studios have even dared to go up against it in theatres this weekend. Early tracking suggest that it could make as much as $150 million in its first weekend in North America, and it’s already grossed over $55 million in China.<\/p>\n

It helps, of course, that the material is familiar to most of the world already. The animated film, which opened in June 1994 at the peak of the Disney animation renaissance, went on to become a critical hit, the highest grossing film of the year at the worldwide box office (it was second domestically to \u201cForrest Gump\u201d), a two-time Oscar winner for Zimmer’s score and the song \u201cCan You Feel the Love Tonight,\u201d and a Broadway show \u2014 now the third-longest running and one of the most successful in history. So it was only a matter of time before the Walt Disney Co., in this new era of live-action remakes of its animated library which this year included both \u201cDumbo\u201d and \u201cAladdin,\u201d turned to one of its most beloved.<\/p>\n

Favreau wasn’t even finished with his version of \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d when he started inquiring about plans for \u201cThe Lion King.\u201d He’d learned so much about motion capture technology and had a team he knew how to collaborate with. He was ready to take it to the next level. So, he raised his hand for the big job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of lobbied for it,\u201d Favreau said.<\/p>\n

The studio waited until \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d was out to give him the official word, but the 2016 movie which scored with both critics and audiences, turned out to be a pretty good audition. And he set to work prepping this \u201clive-action\u201d \u201cLion King,\u201d which, it should be said isn’t live-action at all. It’s a combination of virtual reality and \u201ckeyframe animation,\u201d which means that the animals are all animated by hand, \u201cjust like all the old animated movies,\u201d Favreau explained. In other words, if you visited the set, you would not find some gargantuan soundstage and a bunch of actors running around acting like lions while covered in motion capture bodysuits and dots.<\/p>\n

Rather, it was more of a \u201cblack box with people wearing headsets and VR goggles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The VR was used to \u201cdrive the camera\u201d and \u201cinstead of just one layout artist on a computer, we had a full crew operating virtual cameras in a virtual reality environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That includes esteemed cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, a six-time Oscar nominee.<\/p>\n

The resulting special effect is that \u201cIt should feel like a live-action movie,\u201d he said, even if it’s technically animated.<\/p>\n

For the cast, which includes Donald Glover as Simba, Beyonce as Nala, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, Seth Rogen as Pumbaa and Billy Eichner as Timon, the process was pretty similar to what they would have done for a traditionally animated movie, but Favreau also filmed the actors during their voice recording sessions to help the animators. He knew it would look to weird to try to translate human expressions onto the cats’ faces so instead emotion is conveyed through body language (and a little mouth moving for the dialogue).<\/p>\n

Anyone who’s seen the marketing thus far has no doubt recognized some familiar touchstones from the 1994 film. So familiar, in fact, that many have wondered if it was going to be a shot-for-shot remake. Favreau said that isn’t the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt diverges quite a bit,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s much longer than the original film. And part of what we’re doing here is to (give it more dimension) not just visually but both story wise and emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main story points are the same, but like the stage musical, there will be differences too. Plus, he wanted to capitalize on the uniqueness of his actors.<\/p>\n

With Beyonce, for instance, he even changed the way he directed her and approached her animation after seeing her stage show and all the personas she channels for each song.<\/p>\n

\u201cNala is a very powerful character who’s a warrior and also has a big heart and encapsulates a lot of different archetypes,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted the way she was choreographed and with lions and the fight scenes to have a resonance with the power with which (Beyonce) choreographs her stage show.\u201d<\/p>\n

And of course there’s the music, which is just as important as the images in conjuring up all the emotion and nostalgia associated with the original.<\/p>\n

Zimmer has updated and built upon his own score from 25 years ago, which will also integrate music from the stage show and the 2D film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s quite a lush version of the soundtrack and the score,\u201d Favreau said.<\/p>\n

There will be some recognizable songs, including \u201cCan You Feel the Love Tonight,\u201d \u201cHakuna Matata,\u201d \u201cBe Prepared,\u201d \u201cI Just Can’t Wait to Be King\u201d and \u201cCircle of Life,\u201d plus some new ones too .<\/p>\n

And the hope is that this version resonates not only with the generations that grew up with \u201cThe Lion King,\u201d but with a new batch of kids as well who may be experiencing it for the first time this way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s about the life cycle and coming of age and saying goodbye and all the things that we all deal with,\u201d Favreau said. \u201cIt’s not a story that’s often told but it’s a story that’s probably the most universal story there is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 It was just a few months ago that director Jon Favreau was sitting in a scoring session …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106,54365],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","category-instagram","mauthors-lindsey-bahr","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223270,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223268\/revisions\/223270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}