The Lion King is one of the best Walt Disney Animation Studios films ever. It’s hard to understate the success of what became the highest-grossing animated movie ever upon its release. Its success spawned both a remake and a prequel, but the entire franchise's success may come from its iconic trailer. Even Lin-Mauel Miranda agrees about this.
The first trailer is unique among trailers because it isn’t just a collection of scenes. It’s actually just one scene. The first trailer for the film was simply the movie’s opening scene, the entire “Circle of Life” sequence and it was such an iconic moment that Mufasa: The Lion King songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda remembers it to this day. In a post on Instagram, he said…
The trailer for The Lion King was the first four minutes of The Lion King. Which is maybe the biggest flex in the history of movie trailers. It was just ‘Here’s the first four minutes. Come back for the rest in theaters.’
It's a big flex, but one that the filmmakers clearly knew they could back up. The opening of The Lion King is arguably one of the best opening movie scenes in the history of cinema. The song is perfect, the animation is gorgeous, and it transports you to the movie’s world in an incredible way.
It's a significant risk too, of course, which is what makes it such a confident move. If the filmmakers are wrong and the opening song of the movie isn't enough to draw in an audience, your movie is dead. A standard trailer can show you a movie's highlights, and however inadvertently, that can draw in an audience, even if that audience doesn't end up loving the complete product. Using the movie's opening scene makes it clear just what the movie is.
It's quality is at such a high level that it does exactly what every trailer is supposed to do: it makes you want to come back and watch the whole movie. If this is how the movie starts, just imagine what could happen next. It lights the imagination on fire. Imagine being in a movie theater watching standard trailers, and then seeing this for the first time.
It was such an iconic trailer that Jon Favreau said he wanted to recreate it when The Lion King remake debuted at D23. Unfortunately, the CGI work wasn’t completed in time, so it couldn’t be done. It would have been a fitting way to show off the impressive technology behind the remake by presenting the recreated sequence just as it had been seen before.
The Lion King’s success, spurred on by that original trailer, would lead to the spawning of a franchise. The film got sequels on DVD, animated series follow-ups, the remake that made $1 billion at the global box office, and, most recently, the prequel to the remake in Mufasa: The Lion King, which has become a global hit in its own right.
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