The Disney live-action remake train isn”t slowing down anytime soon. Now the House of Mouse is producing a reimagining of the crown jewel of the Disney Renaissance, The Lion King, to be directed by Jon Favreau.
This new comes after the technical achievements and massive box office haul of Favreau”s take on The Jungle Book. The live-action interpretation of the tale of Mowgli the man cub has made $364 million domestically and $966 million worldwide, helping put Disney (currently) in the top four spots of the highest grossing 2016 films across the world.
Of course, this Lion King will likely be as “live-action” as The Jungle Book, which had a jungle landscape and animals largely created with CGI.
Disney has figured out how to strike box office gold by devoting a chunk of its budget, not to original films (as if!), but to reimaginings of their animated classics. A Jungle Book 2 that”s a sequel this year”s movie is on the way. Following The Jungle Book, Cinderella, and Pete”s Dragon (and earlier reinterpretations of Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty), other updates on animated classics reportedly in the works at Disney are The Little Mermaid, The Sword in the Stone, an Aladdin prequel about Genie, a movie about 101 Dalmatians” Cruella de Vil starring Emma Stone, Pinocchio, Mulan, Winnie the Pooh with an adult Christopher Robin, Peter Pan plus another Peter Pan update about Tinkerbell starring Reese Witherspoon, a Tim Burton-directed Dumbo, the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence of Fantasia, and next year”s Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson. Whew, I”m out of breath now.