King of the big screen
Chiwetel Ejiofor has turned villainous usurper in the much anticipated, star-powered reimagining of The Lion
IT WAS the regal premiere that roared. On Sunday night the cast, crew and songwriters of the $250 million reimagining of The Lion King congregated in a heaving, excitable Leicester Square. To mark the new, computer-generated, all-animal version of their 1994 animated classic, Disney rolled out a carpet
that was, rather than red, savannah-yellow, and fringed with what we might call Africa-inspired “rocks” and flora.
Unfurling from limousines, up rolled the apex predators from the celeb ecosystem: Elton, Pharrell, Seth (Rogen), Jon (Favreau). Then, last but not least, the king and queen of the VIP jungle: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Actually, make that second-last. The ultimate arrivals, who gazumped Harry and Meghan, dodged the yellow carpet and made straight for the Odeon, were the big beasts: Beyoncé, who voices lioness Nala and sings two songs on the soundtrack, and husband Jay-Z. Inside, where we watched the arrivals on the big screen, a cheer erupted, Finally, the real royalty had arrived. Not that Chiwetel Ejiofor, one of the film’s lead voice talent actors — he plays the villainously Shakespearean brother, Scar — saw any of this. The 42-year-old from Forest Gate was stuck on a film set in Kent, where rain had delayed shooting and prevented his arrival in W1.
That other film is The Old Guard, a Netflix production in which he stars alongside Charlize Theron and Matthias Schoenaerts. It’s a comic-book adaptation in which Ejiofor plays an undead mercenary. I ask him what that entails.
“I’m in that kind of…” he begins with a chuckle. One knock-on effect of his interrupted schedule is that we’re talking two days later, in the back of a car taking him from the Lorraine studios to the Corinthia in Charing Cross, where the Lion King junket is taking place.
“..... I dunno,” he says. “But Charlize and Matthias, they’re immortal characters who are just extraordinarily skilled fighters, having been through all these combat situations for thousands of years.”
Speaking of tricky explanations, how do we describe this new filmmaking style that Favreau has used for The Lion King? He directed the 2016 Jungle Book remake that grossed the best part of $1 billion. That had five-yearold Sean Naegeli playing Mowgli. But no humans were harmed in the making of The Lion King, or even put on screen. It’s certainly a senses-scrambling feast, rich in i ma ge r y, action, jokes and songs. But is it pimped-up animation from the future? Virtual reality with extra Hollywood va-va-voom?
“I don’t know how to describe i t ,” E j i o f o r admits, gamely. “It’s definitely next-generation technology. It isn’t really anything anybody’s been talking about in terms of live action or animation.
“But what it does do is give you the feeling of being in a