Where to watch The Lion King (2019)

Trivia & production notes

• Jon Favreau drew inspiration from the Broadway musical adaptation of The Lion King when developing certain aspects of the remake, particularly the roles of Nala and Sarabi.
• Favreau envisioned the film with the visual spectacle of a BBC wildlife documentary, combining that aesthetic with a photorealistic animation style rather than traditional live-action filmmaking.
• The film was dedicated to editor Mark Livolsi, who died in September 2018, and it served as his final film credit.
• Beyoncé was director Jon Favreau's top choice for the role of Nala, and Disney agreed to accommodate her busy schedule to secure her participation.
• James Earl Jones reprised his role as Mufasa from the original 1994 animated film for the remake.
• Amy Sedaris was cast in an original voice role created specifically for the film, rather than voicing a character from the 1994 version.
• The filmmakers created 1,490 visual effects shots, with the majority of the film composed of entirely computer-generated imagery except for one real photograph of an African sunrise used in the opening scene.
• The production team used artificial intelligence to allow virtual animal characters to behave in ways that mimicked real animal movements and behaviors, rather than having animators manually create every action.
• MPC collaborated with tech companies Magnopus and Unity Technologies to build the film's technology platform using the Unity game engine, creating a new virtual production system for directing the animated world.
• The filmmakers developed new software specifically for The Lion King that enabled scenes to be shot with the handheld camera aesthetic typically associated with live-action cinematography.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Lion King (2019 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.