DVDizzy Forum

Josh123 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2024 4:25 am Here is the leaked song "I've always wanted a brother" :
https://x.com/i/status/1822188020096794690

Josh123 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2024 4:25 am Here is the leaked song "I've always wanted a brother" :
https://x.com/i/status/1822188020096794690

Sotiris wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2024 12:34 pm It seems they're trying to replicate the sibling dynamic between Moses and Ramses from The Prince of Egypt, but I highly doubt they'll be able to pull it off.

Sotiris wrote:I'm not on board with them messing with the lore; making Mufasa an orphan and not of royal blood, making Scar a good guy, justifying Scar's resentment towards Mufasa etc.

Why did you want to make this film?

I found the story incredibly moving. There’s this character who we know of as inherently great or inherently royal, and we get to really go in and explore how this person came to be. We’re also looking at what makes some people good and others evil, and how people aren’t fundamentally one or the other.

Why do you think studios are coming to indie filmmakers to do these big-budget pictures?

Maybe they feel like the spectacle is not enough, and they wish that their films could be more emotional, or wish the drama felt more real, or that audiences cared about the characters in a more intense way. So maybe it’s smart to go get people like Chloé and Lee Isaac, who’ve proven they can do those things, and have them learn the skills to do this other thing, because maybe the studios feel it’s more difficult to do one than the other. But I don’t know. I’m not the studio.

The cub who would be king
HOW BARRY JENKINS BREATHED NEW LIFE INTO AN ICONIC DISNEY CHARACTER IN MUFASA: THE LION KING
WORDS BEN TRAVIS

Barry Jenkins has never before made a movie that kids could watch. Whether it's the Oscar-winning Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk or his streaming series adaptation of The Underground Railroad, the filmmaker has always told adult-focused stories. Which is why he wanted to do the opposite for his next project: a prequel to Disney's 2019 photoreal- animated reimagining of The Lion King, telling the origin story of Pride Rock's GOAT. Make way for Mufasa: The Lion King.

"This was an opportunity to experience so many things with an audience that isn't typically engaged with my work - which is young people," Jenkins tells Empire. "Just about everyone on the planet loves The Lion King." Including members of Jenkins' own family. "I remember raising my nephews and watching the 1994 [film] with them, and you come to that scene when Simba is walking up to Mufasa's prone body. I understood that my nephews were experiencing grief for the first time in a really honest way," he recalls. "[They] were so well taken care of by that film - the things they experienced, those new emotions. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could take up the task of doing that same thing for kids today?"

Just as The Lion King told the story of Simba's ascent, Mufasa will rewind for the rise of James Earl Jones' legendary lion - here voiced by Aaron Pierre. For Jenkins, the material is just as thematically rich as his indie fare. "The script told the story of two families," he explains. "The family that's created between the characters we come to know as Scar [Kelvin Harrison Jr's Taka] and Mufasa, and the other family that Mufasa builds and grows over the course of the film. Those two things were hyper-related to the past work I've done - especially these two guys trying to negotiate with one another and figure out the true state of their friendship, their brotherhood."

As well as moving audiences beyond the "perfect" image of Mufasa from The Lion King ("It's not about demythologising him, or humanising him-it's just showing everything has a beginning," notes Jenkins), depicting the character's evolution from humble cub to mighty monarch held real value. "In building a family, [Mufasa] learns to grow beyond his own barriers, his own personal experiences," Jenkins says. "Through engaging with people, seeing how other people function in situations that might be terrifying to him. Just like all of us, he learns by being within a community, not being outside of it."

Expect, too, to see Mufasa and Scar before they became enemies - their partnership illuminated by Lin-Manuel Miranda's freshly penned songs. "One particular two-hander, I Always Wanted A Brother', is really fantastic," Jenkins
enthuses. "It was the first song that Lin wrote, and it just captures everything the movie is about. A scene in the film ended with that [as a] line, and Lin took it and created this. As a musical should, the song took the story into this other stratosphere for three minutes. And by the end of that song, you understand something fundamentally about our two brothers, that maybe you couldn't understand otherwise."

The question is, will Mufasa hit young audiences with a scene as formatively emotional as the original film's remarkably patient death-of-Mufasa? "Maybe you couldn't do that today," says Jenkins, reflecting on the 1994 version's stillness. "Or maybe you can. Maybe you can! We shall see..." Whatever your age, bring a lion's share of tissues.

“The music in ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’ is different and very special, the first thing I wrote became the very beginning of the movie, which is new for me,” said Lebo M.

“For the first time in the history of ‘The Lion King’ my new song, ‘Ingoma’, which will replace ‘Nants' Ingonyama’, will start the film. So it’s a brand new beginning of ‘The Lion King’.

“After writing the first song, I started working with American songwriter and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda. He was brought in to replace Elton John and Tim Rice. I’m currently writing the score, which I’m going back and forth to London for, so it’s still a very exciting process,” said Lebo M.

Three decades later, when he was the only composer asked to return to write music for the prequel, Lebo M said he felt “incredibly special”.

“Seeing what ‘The Lion King’ has been for 30 years, I honestly felt like, ‘Wow this is big’. I’ve been working on ‘Mufasa’ for almost two years now and again I approached it as a project but this one is very special because it’s a prequel, so it doesn’t feel like I’m doing the project I’ve been doing for 30 years.

“The excitement of it now is going back to what life was like for Scar and Mufasa as babies.”