When the Disney remake of The Lion King made $1 billion it wasn’t that surprising. The original movie had been a massive hit in its own right, the highest-grossing animated movie ever at the time. When it was announced that the 2019 movie would get a theatrical follow-up, something the animated original never received, it was even less surprising considering the box office potential. However, what did surprise people was the fact that Barry Jenkins, the Oscar winner and director of movies like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, was going to helm Mufasa: The Lion King.
It’s still a bit surprising that a director known for heavy, awards-caliber dramas is helming a CGI-heavy Disney tentpole on the 2024 movie schedule. Some fans have even suggested Jenkins is “too good” to work on such a project. However, he disagrees. In response to a fan on Twitter who suggested the director was working for “Iger’s soulless machine,” Jenkins said that The Lion King is anything but soulless. He explained…
There is nothing soulless about The Lion King. For decades children have sat in theaters all over the world experiencing collective grief for the first time, engaging Shakespeare for the first time, across aisles in myriad languages. A most potent vessel for communal empathy.
You can stream both versions of The Lion King with a Disney+ subscription.
The man has a point. While The Lion King, both versions of it, certainly became massive blockbuster films, that doesn’t mean that was their only purpose in existence. The original film resonated with global audiences in a big way, that’s why it became so popular, enough to lead to the CGI remake years later. Jenkins clearly believes The Lion King is a movie with a soul, and he thinks the prequel has one as well.
To be fair, Barry Jenkins himself had to wrestle with the idea that movies like Mufasa: The Lion King were not necessarily his kind of film. It seems that the director loved the script so much he really wanted to be involved in it, and the fact that the filmmaking process was something he had never done also appealed to him.
The first trailer for Mufasa: The Lion King is here, and while it certainly doesn’t reveal much about the story of the prequel, it looks technically impressive. If the story is able to match that, then the movie is going to be anything but soulless.
If there was a major criticism of The Lion King remake, it was that the movie didn’t do anything new with the material. Beyond the technology, we’d seen it all before. Mufasa: The Lion King will start with the benefit that The Lion King prequel is something entirely new.
We’ll see what a filmmaker like Barry Jenkins can do with the material when the Mufasa: The Lion King arrives in theaters on December 20.
