LION KING REMAKE A CHALLENGE
Some suggestions for director Favreau
Even a king has his corporate overlords.
And so with Disney’s confirmation this week that the studio will remake its 1994 classic The Lion King, the idea that you don’t mess with perfection has just been felled in a corporate gorge, if not a financial gorging.
The classic titles are being lined up for repurposing like freight cars restocked with billions in bullion. The recent Cinderella and The Jungle Book proved it: There’s a mint to be made in blasting open Disney’s vault of beloved cartoons and re-creating them through new technology.
And who can blame the House of Mouse? When you own decades’ worth of films that are positively stitched into the quilt of pop culture, why not keep going back to that (wishing), well for new returns?
Indeed, in touting its teaming with director Jon Favreau for a fast-tracked Lion King “reimagining,” the Walt Disney Co. trumpeted that this project “follows the technologically groundbreaking smash hit The Jungle Book, directed by Favreau, which debuted in April and has earned $965.8-million worldwide.”
Yes, that golden figure is right there in the studio’s unburied lead. The message: If Favreau’s reimagined Jungle Book can gross nearly a billion, just think what a reimagined Lion King — which in 2014 became the top box-office title in any medium, when factoring in film and theatrical projects — can gross in its new form.
Yes, there are no illusions of new narrative magic being harboured as the primary motive in the Magic Kingdom. The reimagined Beauty and the Beast (with the Oscarwinning Bill Condon in the director’s chair), arrives next year, and should it succeed even reasonably, there is nothing to slow this money train.
Yet The Lion King presents its own challenges, because it became a classic within the lifetimes of most of us, and so is no dusty nugget.
And more important, the double Oscar winner is about as close to animated storytelling perfection as a non-Pixar Disney film has achieved in the past half-century. Many fans hold it dear — nay, nearly sacred.
Which is why this is an appeal to Mr. Favreau: Unlike your Jungle Book, please truly reimagine The Lion King from a narrative perspective, too, out of pure esthetic respect.