the lion king

The circle of life is now complete.

The animated classic gets a CGI makeover in the upcoming Disney film. Watch the trailer now!

On the heels of last week’s Aladdin update comes another exciting bit of casting news for another big Disney remake. This time it’s Jon Favreau’s take on The Lion King, which has enlisted Alfre Woodard as the voice of Sarabi — head lioness, partner to Mufasa, and mother of Simba in the upcoming live-action (ish) version of the studio’s beloved animated classic.

We won’t know if the upcoming live-action Lion King remake is a ‘good movie,’ however you might define the term, until its release on July 19, 2019. But with two years to go until the big unveiling, director Jon Favreau is already off to a strong start. There‘s been a clever little edge to his casting thus far, as he’s tapped black actors for the lion roles in the film (Donald Glover will voice Simba, and James Earl Jones will lend his velvety baritone to sage father Mufasa) and white actors as the other members of the animal kingdom (Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen will voice Timon and Pumbaa; John Oliver has signed on as toucan Zazu), reinforcing the allegory of discord among the royal family and fully transposing it to its African setting.

The upcoming Lion King will bear only a slight resemblance to the Disney animated classic families know and love. As with director Jon Favreau’s earlier rework of The Jungle Book, this film will shoot in live-action (a questionable term when all of the main characters are computer-generated imaged, but whatever) and eschew the musical numbers of the original film. A new casting notice has apprised us of yet another change to the fabric of the film, specifically that Simba’s toucan pal Zazu will now spend the film pointing emphatically to graphics in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen and screaming at fictitious office coworker Janice in Accounting.

Jon Favreau’s “live-action” (let’s use that term loosely, here) remake of The Lion King is batting 1,000 when it comes to casting, with Donald Glover in the role of Simba and Beyoncé (rumored) for the role of Nala. But today’s additions might be the most perfect yet, as Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen have signed on to voice Timon and Pumbaa, everyone’s favorite unlikely-but-lovable meerkat and warthog buddy duo. Meanwhile, we’ll just be waiting for the other shoe to drop in this casting situation — like, say, if Favreau decides to cast Steve Bannon as Scar. Wait, actually that would be sort of perfect.

You may remember pop star Beyoncé Knowles from her stint in the late-’90s/early-’00s R&B girl group Destiny‘s Child with “Pretty Girl Rock” singer Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams (not the one from Manchester by the Sea). But did you know that the celebrated performer has cultivated an active solo career in the years since the group that made her famous broke up? Believe it or not, Knowles released a string of successful studio records over the past decade, starred in the music-video-compilation film Lemonade last year, and wed rapping man Jayson Z in 2008. And with that, I have completed my impression of someone who only heard of Beyoncé when scanning her Wikipedia page just now. We all know who Beyoncé is. She‘s Beyoncé.

So get ready for the best news you’ll hear probably all week. (Yes, I know it’s Friday, but I’m very excited and am losing the ability to process linear time.) Not only is Donald Glover voicing Simba in Jon Favreau’s live-action The Lion King, but none other than James Earl Jones will be lending his vocal talents to Simba’s father Mufasa.

The one good thing that the United States Congress has ever done was pass the National Film Preservation Act in 1988, establishing a National Film Registry in the Library of Congress wherein moving pictures deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” can be securely preserved. The National Film Preservation Board can induct up to 25 new entries into the archives each year, and today Deadline brings the news of which movies will effectively achieve immortality as the Class of 2016. Lots of enduring, worthy works have made the cut, though it is with a solemn heart that I must once again report the egregious continued snub of Pauly Shore comedy vehicle Bio-Dome.

With the news that Jon Favreau was directing a live-action remake of arguably THE most popular Disney movie of all time, The Lion King, people were undoubtedly excited. Favreau successfully launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man, believed by many to still be the best Avengers movie, and has had a few notable successes since, including Chef in 2014 and this summer’s almost-entirely-CGI remake of The Jungle Book. The latter did so well that Disney hired Favreau again to direct The Lion King, and today it was announced that the film has found a screenwriter.

Well this is certainly an interesting tweet, from director Jon Favreau:

Seventeen years after its initial box-office run, ‘The Lion King’ is again reigning supreme. The new 3D incarnation of the film, currently in a limited-engagement run, took in another $22 million to land atop the charts for the second weekend in a row.