DVDizzy Forum

Sotiris wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 7:20 amThe film has been shortlisted for a Razzie Award.

Turns out, “Mufasa” just had to wait to be king.

Disney’s “Lion King” prequel is No. 1 at the domestic box office after trotting behind “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” in its opening weekend. (“Mufasa” claimed victory at the end of 2024 over the five-day holiday stretch, but “Sonic 3” was ever-so-slightly ahead during the traditional weekend.) “Mufasa” added an additional $24 million from 3,925 North American theaters in its third weekend of release, declining just 26% from its prior outing. So far, the family friendly musical adventure about the future leader of Pride Lands has grossed $168 million domestically and $476 million globally. Those are solid ticket sales after a rocky start in theaters. But “Mufasa” cost over $200 million to produce, and since theater owners get to keep half of revenues, the tentpole needs to keep stampeding through cinemas in the new year to justify its budget.

PatchofBlue wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2025 2:45 am Whoever thought of that opening line deserves a raise.

Sotiris wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 7:20 am The film has been shortlisted for a Razzie Award.

The Disneynerd wrote: Beautiful! Hopefully this is the final nail in the coffin for upcoming remakes.

But the biggest innovation was a new process called Quad Cap, in which MPC animators wearing dots walked in a bipedal human fashion in a circle, reciting lines the actors had already recorded, but on the surrounding computer screens, they saw lions strolling the Savannah in a straight line. They did 10 voice recording sessions with the actors, and the crew put a locked-off camera in the room to capture their expressions and movements, which became the basis of the lions, but Quad Cap added even more anthropomorphic qualities.

“It’s always been traditionally difficult to capture [the] performance of people and turn it into animals,” Valdez said. “It’s just not simple to do, especially live. And so the animation team at MPC were already doing some clever things by taking their own motion capture of themselves and converting it into quadrupedal movement as a way to expedite the creation of our shooting scenes.

“We had a combination of techniques developed during our shoot,” he continued. “About midway through, it was just requested to try this. So it was a combination of the stage team and the actual mechanism, which is almost like a robotic puppet thing: human body comes in, lion movement comes out. The front legs are kind of the front legs, but the back legs are completely created from whatever the front legs are doing. Wherever you move your head, the lion’s whole neck and head is moving, and the animators would just fold their arms, so you’re mapping what you can. Then, we needed the Unreal Engine at Epic to add some capabilities from games, and we pulled it back into the editing software, and turned it on, and now the lions could follow the terrain.”

“Mufasa” has surpassed $500 million globally after four weeks of release, while “Moana 2” is poised to swim past the $1 billion mark with ticket sales currently at $989.9 million.

“The Lion King” prequel led the pack again at the global box office over the weekend with $41 million, including $27.9 million from 52 international markets. After a rough start around Christmas, the photorealistic musical adventure about the future leader of Pride Lands has rebounded, with revenues at $540 million to date. Outside of the United States and Canada, where “Mufasa” has generated $189 million, the top-earning territories are France ($33.7 million), the United Kingdom ($29.9 million), Mexico ($24.6 million) and Germany ($24 million). The film cost above $200 million to produce, though, so Disney needs “Mufasa” to continue stampeding through theaters to justify its mega price tag.

Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel

The Crow
Joker: Folie à Deux
Kraven the Hunter
Mufasa: The Lion King
Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver

Rather, this is about Mufasa‘s impressive staying power thanks to strong word of mouth, viral marketing and a longer exclusive theatrical window, even if the prequel will never come close to matching The Lion King, which exceeded all expectations in grossing $1.66 billion globally just months before the COVID pandemic struck and changed box office history forever.

Just as pundits questioned whether Jon Favreau‘s Lion King redux would work, many were quick to write off Mufasa when it got trounced by Sonic 3 over the Dec. 20-22 weekend. The Disney pic debuted to $35.4 million domestically, versus $64.4 million for Sonic 3. But as families became more available once presents were unwrapped on Christmas day, Mufasa found its roar. What’s happened since is even more impressive.