As BEAUTY AND THE BEAST continues to rake in those big box-office bucks, Disney continues their march towards giving every one of their animated classics the live-action twist. One of the many upcoming remakes will be Jon Favreau's THE LION KING, which will be shot back-to-back with a sequel to THE JUNGLE BOOK. Production on THE LION KING will get underway in a few months and the cast is beginning to come together, and the latest addition could be Beyonce.
Variety reports that Beyonce is currently the Jon Favreau's top choice to voice Nala, Simba's best friend who would later become his wife. As Beyonce is currently pregnant with twins, Variety's sources say that she hasn't made a decision about whether or not to take the gig yet. As it's a voice-acting role, Jon Favreau and Disney are apparently willing to do "whatever it takes" to accommodate her schedule. Should Beyonce walk away with the role, she would join Donald Glover as Simba and James Earl Jones as Mufasa.
Jon Favreau's THE LION KING is set to be scripted by Jeff Nathanson (CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and doesn't currently have a release date. For his part, Favreau is certainly aware of how highly regarded the original is as well as the challenges which he will have to face by remaking it.
The thing is that the animated version of The Lion King is — I don’t know how you outdo that. It works tremendously well. I think it was sort of the end of the era before the 3D animation started coming in, and I don’t think anybody wants to see an animated version because if you want to see an animated version, look at the original. It holds up, it’s still wonderful to watch. So the trick is can you make it look like you actually found real animals in a real environment? And how do you translate the story through that?