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IndieWire caught up with the director at the “Avengers: Endgame” world premiere where he revealed there is only one live-action shot in the entirety of his “The Lion King” remake. Favreau snuck in the shot just to see whether or not viewers will be able to tell the difference between live-action and the movie’s photorealistic visual effects.

While he didn’t personally grow up with the original “Lion King,” Favreau said he fully understands the reverence for the film, which, like “Aladdin,” has spawned direct-to-video sequels and a Broadway musical. Indeed, with “The Lion King” still reigning as the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of all time, the intensity of interest comes as no surprise.

“I pay attention [to the fans] because it’s their movie too,” Favreau said. “They grew up with this thing, and there’s some sort of collective understanding between the filmmaker and the audience around the world of what the essence and spirit of ‘The Lion King’ is. You can’t react and overcorrect to each comment because there’s such an array of different specific opinions. But you can get a sense as you listen to the zeitgeist reverberating that people seem to be connecting with it.”

While the new “Lion King” has been widely referred to as a live-action version, in reality it’s a different kind of animal, taking the immersive computer-generated animation of “The Jungle Book” and pushing the technology even further.

“The environments are all digital and the animals are all digital,” said Favreau. “Everything is generated by a computer — except for one shot. There’s one shot in the movie that’s a real shot of a real environment that I put in just to see if anybody would be able to pick it out.” (Asked for a hint of what that shot might be, Favreau demurred: “Let’s wait. That’ll be a trivia question.”)

Having now worked on two remakes of beloved Disney films, Favreau is perhaps more aware than anyone of the particular challenges involved. When his “Lion King” opens, he just hopes fans of the original film will walk into the theater with an open mind.

“You have to enter the process with a humility and make a case for not just watching the original,” Favreau said. “You have to be additive to the experience and dimensionalize it. You have to surprise people but also deliver on their expectations. And that’s the game.”

Stunning concept art, powerful behind-the-scenes photography, and fascinating interviews with the cast and crew pack The Art and Making of The Lion King, offering an inside perspective on how director Jon Favreau and his talented team used the most advanced virtual cinematography and computer graphics techniques to craft a film of both legend and hyperrealism. The story of The Lion King has entered the pantheon of cultural mythology, as has its iconic music. In revisiting this tale, the filmmaking team set off for an adventure of a lifetime: an expedition across the southern portion of Kenya in Africa. These seasoned filmmakers gathered reference photographs, scans, and other materials to apply to the digital moviemaking process and in turn were immersed in the nuances of the real environment. Once back at the studio, they utilized common filmmaking tools with state-of-the-art virtual reality (VR) technology and new, ultrafast rendering technologies to create a "virtual production," a concept they pushed further than it had ever been before. The Art and Making of The Lion King documents this captivating journey and closes the circle with a discussion on a modern-day conservation program called the Lion Recovery Fund (LRF).

Brian Scott wrote:When designing this sequence in the Lion King, Jon Favreau encouraged me to be inspired by Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune.

Brian Scott wrote:The staging in this scene served as a great inspiration to me when I was re-imagining an iconic moment in the Lion King.

After months of speculation, Favreau confirmed to EW that the tune will in fact be featured in the film—but that’s not to say it’s not a surprise worth preparing for in and of itself. “As opposed to going into the specifics, in a broader sense one of the things that I was absolutely thrilled about was Hans Zimmer being on board this,” says Ejiofor. “The music that he brought to the first Lion King was so extraordinary in all of its detail and all of its richness and all of its color, and so the hope, in whatever particular form that [“Be Prepared”] takes in this version, is that we still have a sense of all of that wonder and all of that wonderful orchestration that Hans brings to the first movie.”

Sotiris wrote:This makes me a bit worried. How much are they going to change Be Prepared? I hope it's not a radical change.