Live action The Lion King remake announced, Jon Favreau to direct for Disney
Disney is set to complete the circle of life once again as a live action remake of ‘The Lion King’ has been announced by the Hollywood studio.
Fresh from his success of adapting ‘The Jungle Book’ earlier this year, Jon Favreau is the man tasked with bringing the hit 1994 animation right up to date, using state of the art VFX technology to tell Simba’s tale.
Like ‘The Jungle Book’, this new take on Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s African-set adventure will be a live-action/VFX hybrid, but it’s not yet clear whether the film will retain any of the original’s musical numbers written by Elton John and Tim Rice.
The news was revealed by Jon Favreau himself who tweeted, deleted, then quickly reposted a message that simply read:
Excited for my next project ????????
— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) September 28, 2016
Disney quickly followed this with a statement that read:
We can officially confirm that The Walt Disney Studios and director Jon Favreau are putting a new reimagining of The Lion King on the fast track to production. The project follows the technologically groundbreaking smash hit The Jungle Book, directed by Favreau, which debuted in April and has earned $965.8 million worldwide.
The Lion King builds on Disney’s success of reimagining its classics for a contemporary audience with films like Maleficent, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book. The upcoming Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson as Belle, is already one of the most anticipated movies of 2017. Like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King will include songs from the animated film. Disney and Favreau are also in development on a sequel to The Jungle Book. No release date has been announced for either film.
The Lion King (1994) is one of the biggest animated films of all time with a lifetime global box office gross of $968.8 million, including $422.8 million domestically. It won Academy Awards for the original song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” (Elton John, Tim Rice) and original score (Hans Zimmer), plus two Grammy Awards, with the soundtrack selling over 14 million copies. In 1997, the stage production The Lion King made its Broadway debut, winning six Tony Awards; 19 years later, it remains one of Broadway’s biggest hits alongside several other productions running around the world, including London, Hamburg, Tokyo, Madrid, Mexico City, Shanghai, and North America. Translated into eight different languages, its 23 global productions have been seen by more than 85 million people across every continent except Antarctica. The Lion King’s worldwide gross exceeds that of any film, Broadway show or other entertainment title in box office history.
(HT: Den of Geek)
