Circle of Life: An Oral History Of ‘The Lion King’ For Its 25th Anniversary (2024)

Remember who you are…

This summer marks the 25th anniversary ofThe Lion King, a Disney film that helped define an entire generation. Seriously, ask any millennial (myself included) what movie they watched again and again as a child, and the answer will almost always be The Lion King—no contest.

Armed with majestically groundbreaking animation, a knockout voice cast, hit songs, genuine emotion, quotable dialogue, genuine humor, and profound themes, the movie fast cemented itself as a beloved classic not just for millennials, but for all of humankind. However, would you believe that it wasn't always that way? That no one at Disney much cared for the project in the beginning? I'm getting a ahead of myself here.

To help celebrate the film’s 25th birthday—as well as Jon Favreau’s upcoming “live-action” remake (in theaters everywhere July 19)—I went on a safari to hunt down the folks who helped make the original Lion King a vivid reality. Without further ado, I have the highest honor to present a near-definitive oral history of a modern classic…

Cast of characters:

  • Linda Woolverton (screenwriter)
  • Rob Minkoff (co-director with Roger Allers)
  • Christopher Sanders (production designer)
  • Mark Mancina (arranger/song writer)
  • Ernie Sabella (voice of Pumbaa, the warthog)
  • Cheech Marin (voice of Banzai, the hyena)
  • Jim Cummings (voice of Ed, the hyena)

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It all began with a title, “King of the Jungle.” Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of Disney’s animation department at the time (and future founder of DreamWorks), had a very personal connection to the project and was adamant that it be made. Of course, it still had many changes to undergo before it became the masterpiece it was destined to become.

WOOLVERTON: I was on a movie called Homeward Bound and then Jeffrey Katzenberg took me off [that movie], which I was upset about, and put me on this thing called “King of the Jungle.” So, that’s how I got involved … Jeffrey really wanted to do a coming of age [story] of a lion cub in Africa. That’s kind of what we went back to and so, I asked him what drew him to the idea, because he was very very committed to the project. He told a really interesting personal story about the betrayal [by] an avuncular figure in his life. That kicked me off to this particular telling, which is Scar betraying Simba; Simba’s trust of Scar, and you know how the story goes from there.

MINKOFF: The original approach to King of the Jungle was very naturalistic. It was conceived more like a True-Life Adventure. When I came aboard the project, I felt very strongly that it needed a spiritual dimension to deepen the mythic qualities of the storytelling. Roger [Allers] felt very much the same way and so we collaborated very effectively. We brought in all kinds of references and differing philosophies.

Roger and I both liked very theatrical stories and storytelling. Again, the original was much more reality-based and naturalistic. On The Little Mermaid, I designed Ursula as a drag queen a la Divine from the John Waters films. Roger storyboarded “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” And I did the first experimental animation of the character. So, we both enjoyed very theatrical, humorous, colorful—though edgy—approaches to entertainment. We brought this combined sensibility to our development and direction of the new and improved Lion King.

SANDERS: I was [hired] pretty early on. The project was around for a very long time in development. I was working on Beauty and the Beast when I first saw drawings [for Lion King] at the studio. At that point, it was called King of the Jungle. I guess when I really engaged [with it] and got started was I began by being asked to be one of the art directors. I had never art directed before and … I went to Africa with the crew at that point. It was the most amazing trip I have ever had in my life.

I think it’s fair to say that nobody really knew exactly where this whole thing was gonna go. The studio was working on Pocahontas and they were finishing up Aladdin at the time, and we really struggled for quite a while to try to find the voice and look and the vibe for [The Lion King]. For a reasonable amount of time, there was a lot of suspense as to whether or not this film [would work].

The trip to Africa [in Kenya] changed the course of the film because I never really thought of a trip like that as being something that was important. I’m sure you could do a Lion King film without going to a place like that, but [directors] Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, [visual development artist/character designer] Lisa Keene, myself, [story supervisor] Brenda Chapman and the producer Don Hahn, we all went to Africa together. We saw things and did things every single day and we bonded.

It was one of those things where later on as we were working on the film, there’d be a moment where Roger would look up and say, "We should make this thing like…" and then somebody else would say, "That day by the river" and he’d say, "Yes!" You all just understood what everybody was talking about.

In terms of plot, it’s common knowledge that The Lion King is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, except with talking animals in place of the humans. The elements of murdered kings and two-faced uncles help it along in that regard, but when exactly did the idea of adapting one of the Bard’s most famous plays crystallize at Disney?

WOOLVERTON: At the time, the big thing to do was the hero’s journey, the Hero With a Thousand Faces. That was going around the studio, [the motto was], "This is how we make movies now." … Jeffrey sent me home for the weekend [after] we had sort of conjured up this story and said, "What I want you to do is I want you to analyze what we’re so far with Hero With a Thousand Faces."

They had this summary by Chris Vogler because no one was going to read the whole book. So, I went home and I wrote him a memo, which I actually still have, about analyzing our story according to the hero’s journey and this is when I went off onto Hamlet and I basically said, "It is at this point that we veer out of hero’s journey and really move into Shakespeare territory." I don’t know if I mentioned [ him specifically]. Maybe I did, I can’t remember, but that’s kind of when that happened.

MINKOFF: The first thing our producer, Don Hahn, did once Roger [Allers] and I became [directing] partners, was to convene a small group to rework the story. Myself, Roger, Brenda Chapman, Kirk Wise, and Gary Trousdale gathered and hashed out a new story outline. This structure which included all the major new set pieces—including Circle of Life, the Elephant Graveyard, Stampede, Simba’s Exile, Timon and Pumbaa as outcasts, Mufasa’s Ghost, and Simba’s return to Pride Rock—was pitched to the studio heads: Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy Disney, Jr. Peter Schneider, and Tom Schumacher.

As we finished the pitch, Eisner asked if we could use Shakespeare, specifically King Lear, as a model to ground the material. But it was Maureen Donnelly, producer of The Little Mermaid, who suggested Hamlet was more appropriate, and that connected with everyone. You could hear a collected gasp of recognition as the crowd murmured,

"The uncle murders the king... of course!” “It’s Hamlet with Lions!” Michael declared and that was that.

If you notice, Rafiki sits in the lotus position on a rock waiting for Simba to catch up with him in the “remember who you are” scene. This was no accident, but an intentional reference to eastern mysticism. This was done very much under the influence of Joseph Campbell who became so prominent after George Lucas popularized his concepts in the Star Wars movies. His writing on comparative religions and the hero’s journey inspired us to imbue the world of these animals with recognizable spiritual motifs.

SANDERS: Everyone was very aware that it was a very Hamlet-ish story, definitely.

Even with those broad strokes set down, there were several ideas that would drastically evolve over time.

WOOLVERTON: There was a script that existed for King of the Jungle written by Ron Bass that the studio wan’t happy with, which is why I was brought on. In that version, there was a pride [and] there were hyenas who were sort of the group antagonists. Then I came on and we basically started again and what was interesting about it was they had done a lot preliminary artwork, so there was this incredible room filled with remarkable artwork of the Serengeti.

Things evolve with storyboards … Then you go back in and you re-write again or you actually re-write again on the board itself, so a lot of stuff doesn’t actually land in the screenplay. It starts to evolve from there.

MINKOFF: In the original version, Timon and Pumbaa were childhood friends of Simba and Nala, and played with them around the waterhole. But we knew we had to carefully handle the idea that these animals were predators and prey. They actually eat each other. We didn’t want to deemphasize that fact. It was crucial for us to find a way to tell the story honesty.

I heard a story about the original pitch. Charlie Fink, then head of creative development, pitched the concept to Michael Eisner as “Bambi in Africa.” Michael’s response was, “ If you can find a way for the lions not to eat Bambi, it may work.”

When we devised the crucial story point that Simba was chased into exile by the hyenas, we reworked the meerkat and warthog into the lovable outcasts who take Simba under their wings but lead him astray into a life without responsibility. The song "Hakuna Matata," not conceived until much later in the process, became their motto to express this life of “no worries.”

Research played a big part of Woolverton’s writing process. Had it not been for a Swahili-to-English dictionary, we would never have gotten names like Pumbaa or Rafiki (the latter of which means "friend"). More importantly, we would never have gotten one of the most heart-breaking scenes in the history of cinema.

WOOLVERTON: We were trying to figure out how to kill Mufasa. He had to be the best dad [but] he also had to have the best death. There was a lot of conversation [about that]. Should we throw him off a cliff or…? Yeah, we’ve seen that before. And you can’t have a gun, so how are you gonna kill this guy? Ultimately, I was looking in these research books and I had this one book that was all photographs of a wildebeest stampede when they migrate.

It was amazing and I had never seen anything like it. I mean, they trample each other, so this book had dead wildebeest lying next to a stream, trampling each other and I thought, "Oh, yeah, that’s how we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna trample him in a river of wildebeest." And they all looked at me like I was absolutely out of my mind. [They said] "We can’t draw that many wildebeest." I said, "Well, yes you can, because you did that great ballroom scene with the computer in Beauty and the Beast."

I just remember sitting around eating Fig Newtons with the group … and conjuring up this tale that would sweep the world and become an iconic Disney story.

Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts later contributed to the script, adding more light-hearted moments.

WOOLVERTON: [They wrote] a lot of the humor. The Timon and Pumbaa humor is theirs, it’s not mine. I don’t really write fart jokes. Not that there’s anything wrong with fart jokes at all, it’s just not my purview.

With the characters and the story beats now firmly in place, The Lion King needed a voice cast, but not just any voice cast would do. This movie had an ensemble like no other: James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane, Cheech Marin, Ernie Sabella, Matthew Broderick, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Guillaume, and Madge Sinclair. When the project was being cast, Lane and Sabella were starring in Guys and Dolls on Broadway and had been considered for the roles of the hyenas, not Timon and Pumbaa.

SABELLA: We started reading the part and improving and knowing each other’s comic rhythms and we were just cracking each other up. When we got done, we looked up and there was Roger Allers’ mouth open and we sort of slipped out of the booth and said, "Ok, thank you." He said nothing, we got out of the room, we’re going to the elevator and I said, “At least we have a nighttime job." We heard, a month or two later, that we were playing Pumbaa and Timon, and we said, "Who’s that?" Jeffrey Katzenberg told us, “Well, we wrote these two characters after your audition, and we need them because at this point in our movie, we need some levity. We just killed dad, you know?”

WOOLVERTON: I wasn’t thinking Jeremy Irons for Scar. I actually didn’t have a voice in my head then. I really wanted Sean Connery in the beginning for Mufasa, but obviously it was so much better [to cast] James Earl Jones.

While early designs portrayed Pumbaa as “pretty mean,” Sabella’s warm personality led to the character being turned into a wild boar with a heart of gold.

SABELLA: I was thinking of Michael Gazzo from The Godfather [Part II] in that scene where he’s in the courtroom [going against his affidavit against Michael Corleone]. I thought, “I don’t know if that’s the way to go, but at least I can start on that path of having a big lovable, undecided, always hemming and hawing [character].”

I knew nothing about [warthogs] and I didn’t think that I should read up on them because I was trying to make this animal a big lovable, friendly Disney character. I didn’t know they were that small, I didn’t know they were that ferocious and mean. The drawing on the wall changed and he got friendlier and bigger with more smiles. They changed it to how I was doing it and I thought, “I hope that works.”

Rob Minkoff and [Roger Allers], these guys knew what they were doing; they’re such masters. They pretty much let us run like wild horses, but every once in a while, they’d say, "You know, that’s good, [but] let’s try it where they’re a little more hesitant, they’re a little more scared." I’d never done this before, so this was really interesting—we’d get direction from the booth into your headphones and just change the scene.

We were at one screening where the movie was done (half in black and white and half in color) and they showed us many scenes. When they got done … lights come up, Jeffrey Katzenberg is like four rows ahead of us, he stands up, turns, and he goes, “You saved our ass!” And I thought, “My God, we’re really in this movie.” I said to Nathan after a couple of months, “Don’t get used to this. They’re gonna get somebody like Dom DeLuise, they’ll get somebody for you. We’re not gonna be starring in this movie. We’re just giving them a few hints on how to do it.”

SANDERS: Over the years, Timon [has been my favorite]. He just gets funnier to me. There’s this one moment that I think was one of the most brilliant little pieces of writing … Working in the story department, working as a writer and director, you begin to realize the things you have to do to get a movie going … there was this brilliant moment, I don’t know who wrote it, but it’s where Timon and Pumbaa find Simba.

And [Timon] says, "So what have you been doing?" And Simba says, "I don’t wanna talk about it." And Timon says, "Good! We don’t wanna hear about it!" And boom! Intro is done. We don’t have to worry about [all the exposition of where Simba’s come from]. Not only did it get us out of that moment with a laugh, but it was exactly what the story needed because he can't tell everybody exactly where he’s been because that’s something we have to save for later. That’s just one of those moments that Timon and his character get us through with a laugh. [It’s] brilliant.

SABELLA: There were a few [ad-libbed lines], of course. [For example,] “What do you want me to do, put on a skirt and dance the hula?” We were sitting there [wondering] how are we gonna end this, how are we gonna get Timon to distract [the hyenas]? [Nathan proposed the line] and they slowly turned to him and went, "I don’t think we can do that...can we do that?" He said, "Why not?" And before you knew it, they wrote the song [and] he did it. They called me and said, "Come on in, we want you to be part of the song" and all I did was "yup yup yup." To this day, it’s the funniest 30 seconds onscreen.

Lane and Sabella didn’t end up voicing the hyenas (aka Scar’s minions), but they still got some A-list talent in the forms of Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, and Jim Cummings. I was fortunate enough to speak to two out of the three actors behind the hyenas. Marin already had a relationship with the studio after voicing Tito in 1988’s Oliver and Company. Cummings, on the other hand, landed the role of Ed (the cackling, slow-witted member of the group) because another actor felt they weren’t right for the part.

MARIN: … One time, [Jeffrey and I] were skiing together and we were riding up the lift and he said, "I have a project for you and I’m gonna put you in this movie. It’s an animated movie, it’s gonna be a big deal." I said, "Ok, when?" He said, "A couple years from now." I go, "Ooook, gimme a call." Two years later, he gives me a call and that’s how I got to be in The Lion King.

You kind of adapted the attitude of the individual hyena. Whoopie was kind of the leader of the [gang] and then I was always reacting to her and then Jim Cummings was always reacting to us. It was interesting the way it went and it was mostly the directors that do that because they have a visual of where they want this to go and then they kind of mold you to their vision.

At first, I was like, "Oh, ok, it’s a nice animated feature and they’ve got animals and lions." And they started drawing in the studio and fashioned it to what I was doing and what those characters are doing and they come back and [ask you try it a little bit differently].

CUMMINGS: A good friend of mine, Frank Welker, had read for the part of Ed and he was doing his thing, but for one reason or another, he wasn’t "feeling it," as they say these days. He said, "You know, I have an idea. Why don’t you call Jimmy Cummings and give him a tumble?" So, they gave me a call and I went over to see Rob Minkoff and Don Hahn and Roger Allers and they kind of explained the character to me, all his subtleties—I’m saying that with a wink. It ended up being a good match and next thing you know, I was laughing my little [heart out] all day. It wasn’t even a very long session. Almost all in one and then we did a few looping sessions.

Technically, there was no script [for Ed] and it was not unlike the Tasmanian devil [for Looney Tunes] ... Instead of a script, Rob just started throwing out emotions and it had to all be done with a laugh. It would be betrayal, fear, anger, hunger, happiness, ecstatic, curiosity, trepidation, danger. You know, just all the way down the line. We had any number of descriptive emotions and attitudes and I just went down the list. I’m telling you, it was like 45 minutes, I think, and we were done.

It was a challenge just to get the emotions and the intentions of each line out there. It had to contribute to the story, it had to contribute to the scene, it had to fit in, it had to match the emotional impact of each scene. It was challenge, but it was a fun challenge. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Working at the Disney animation studios at Disney World in Orlando, Christopher Sanders (who would go on to co-direct 2002's Lilo & Stitch) helped define the overall look of the film, particularly those moments that aesthetically stood apart from the rest of the story.

SANDERS: In case of The Lion King, I was charge in some of the sequences that were stylistic departures from the rest of the film. "I Just Can’t Wait to be King" is the best example of that. I also helped in designing some of characters. I worked on Timon and I would design some of the creatures [like] bugs and birds. I feel like I was the assistant to the art director. I would do everything from storyboards, to designing an entire sequence, to regular storyboard work. One of the storyboarded sequences I worked on was the wildebeest stampede.

When it came to "I Just Can’t Wait to be King," we really wanted to have this vibrant old design and those are the days before computers, so everything was hand drawn. There were limits to what we could do and yet within those limits, I think we achieved quite an exciting sequence.

MARIN: I said, "This [movie] is gonna be ok" until they showed me one bit of preliminary animation and I go, "Ohhhhh. Ok, this is going to be very very different than anything I’ve ever seen. This could be huge." It was so innovative at the time. It was the first time I ever saw a rack focus shot in an animated picture and I go, "Oh, this is just like using live-action techniques in this thing." I was very impressed.

CUMMINGS: I ended up going to Africa for a month with my family and we were blown away at how perfectly the animators had captured the nuances of each animal’s gait. Even the hornbill, Zazu—it was amazing. The lions moved the way they really did in the movie and even the wildebeest. It was such a treat. Even Pumbaa, the warthog, his tail going up in the air. It was uncanny; they completely captured the essence of each of the animals.

Harkening back to the early days of production, Chris recounted a story that perfectly sums up how much of an unknown quantity The Lion King was in its infancy.

SANDERS: After work, because I was right there in the park, I walked over to the Benihana at the Japan world showcase and I was compelled, because I was by myself, to sit with other people. And so, this conversation started, "Oh, so where are you from?" And stuff and the conversation came around to me and I said, "Oh, I’m Chris and I work here at the animation studio." Everybody got excited and said, "Oh are you working on Pocahontas?!” I said, "Oh, no." They said, "Are you working on Aladdin?!" I said, "No." They said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I’m working on Lion King." And there was a silence and someone said, "What’s that?" I said, "Well, it’s a movie about a lion who’s a king." And there was continued silence and then someone said, "Oh, that sounds nice." I thought, "Wow! This really sounds a little bit weird."

No oral history of this movie would be complete without a discussion of the music. The original songs, which have become indelibly woven into the fabric of our pop culture, were written by Elton John and Tim Rice, while the instrumental soundtrack was handled by Hans Zimmer. An up-and-coming composer himself, Mark Mancina (Speed, Moana) was brought onto the project as an arranger and ended up contributing way more to the soundtrack than originally intended.

MANCINA: One of the tasks was they had not been able to get these Elton John songs to sound African. They had tried, they had some people do some arrangements and the songs just didn’t sound like they were the least bit African. They gave me three tracks: "Hakuna Matata," "I Just Can’t Wait to be King," and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight."

I took those home and I re-worked them and one-by-one, I brought them in and showed the directors, Rob and Roger, and the other people that were involved [like head of music, Chris Montan] and they really liked me work. It was really working, it was starting to really come together and become this really cool mixture of pop music and African music.

Along with that came some scoring because there are scenes within the songs. An example would be Simba walking across the log in "Hakuna Matata" [as] he grows up. That really wasn’t in the song, so I had to write that and I had to figure out how to make that seamless with the song and make it all feel like one thing … That was exciting and every time I hear it when they do the musical—it’s probably 20 seconds long, if that—it’s special to me because I wrote it and it became part of Elton’s song.

That was really good practice and Disney really liked that and I think that really impressed Chris Montan and Chris put me up for a lot of projects after that. It was a really great way to learn how to work on an animated film.

The Swahili phrase for “no worries” forms the basis of the mantra sung by Timon and Pumbaa shortly after they meet up with Simba. The soundtrack ended up being so popular, that it sold millions of copies.

MANCINA: [“Hakuna Matata”] was a very difficult song to make work. It took two different tempos and it’s just kind of weird. It’s kind of an oddball song, but it turned out really good. It had to be funny, it had to have this beautiful [grow-up transformation for Simba], it was a challenge and I think that turned out really well.

SABELLA: [Pumbaa’s gas problem] was not in the script. That started when [Nathan and I] had done a five-show weekend … and they wanted us to be [recording lines] at eight or nine in the morning on a Monday. We get there and I’ve had a couple of cappuccinos and a couple of pastries, I’m ready to go. Nathan hadn’t had that, so he’s mumbling [his lines because he’s so tired].

I had a line, I don’t remember what it was. I’d say it and then I’d put my hand to my mouth and [make a farting noise], and Nathan starts laughing. He said, "Don’t do that." I said, "Ok, I won’t do that." And I said the line again and [then made the fart noise again], and he starts laughing again. Then I look up from the booth and [the directors] are going, "Keep it up, keep it up." So, I just gassed out this entire scene and Nathan had tears in his eyes and at the end, they were all applauding because he just woke up and we were funny.

CUMMINGS: Nathan and Ernie, I guess they weren’t necessarily singers or musicians, but I am and my friend, Jess Harnell, is. It’s hard for people who don’t sing to learn a song and ["Hakuna Matata"] had a lot of breaks. They had an idea, I think it was Rob, who said, "Let’s just get Jess to be Timon and Jim to be Pumbaa and we’ll have them sing the demo." We’d sing along to the music and then, they could take that and send one to Ernie and one to Nathan and let them play it in their cars for two or three weeks.

So, we’re going through the song and [the lyrics were] "When I was a kid, it was tough and you had it easy, I had it hard." No kid wants to hear that ... [So I said] "Wait a minute, weren’t we making [a joke] about Pumbaa having gas?" I thought for a second, then I went over and whispered in Jess’s ear and I said, "Ok I think I got a verse here," because there were two in a row about the same thing. We got to the verse, "Oh the shame / Tell me how did you feel / I thought of changing my name / And I got down-hearted / Every time that I— / Pumbaa not in front of the kids."

We are alluding to the word "farted" and they don’t even say "farted" in England. Tim Rice didn’t write that; he would have done "breaking wind" or something like that. You look out of the booth and they’re all rolling around on the floor, giving the thumbs up, the OK sign. So, that was pretty awesome. Uncredited, mind you.

SANDERS: I remember another day when we were all sitting around and we were struggling to come up with the visuals and the storyboards and the vibe for this warthog rhapsody song [Pumbaa’s fart interlude] which again, it doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing to spend your day doing. Like, ‘I’m working on a warthog song.’

Then somebody came in and said, "Hey! Aladdin just finished the ‘Prince Ali’ sequence and they’re gonna screen it in the theater." We walked down the street, crowded into a theater, and they played the "Prince Ali" sequence, which was fantastic.

It was also a little bit crushing to us because walked back out, sat back down and, of course [we were a little dejected] because" Prince Ali" was finished with music and it was bombastic and colorful and beautiful. We sat back down on our drawing boards and were like, "Ok, so back to the warthog song" and it was like, "What are we doing? What in the world are we doing here?" … I don’t wanna say it was discouraging, but you went back to what you’re doing and you’re like, "What in the world is gonna become of this film?"

SABELLA: It was a sweet little ditty and I thought, "Oh, well this is gonna be fun. Let’s just have fun with it. They might use it, they might stick it in somewhere." At the first screening we saw of the movie, I was sitting there with Jeremy Irons and this song went on and on and they cross over the log and it’s the passage of time. I went, "This is huge!"

At the end [of the song], Pumbaa plays a cornet or a trumpet; that’s really me doing it. Hans Zimmer, he said, "Ernie, give me some mouth trumpet there … I know you can do this." I did that and I thought, "Oh, this is nice that he let me do that." And I tell you, when I saw the movie and it was still in, I just thought, "What a great guy! He let me do that and he used that in the movie."

You’ve also got “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and, of course, Scar’s big number, “Be Prepared,” which involves him singing to the hyenas about his impending takeover of Pride Rock.

CUMMINGS: I got to sing “Be Prepared.” Jeremy [Irons] does a little of the signing, but they had me come in to do a voice match. The funny thing was Jeffrey Katzenberg was there and he was very concerned; they were all concerned about Jeremy not being a singer, but I thought he was awesome. But they brought me in and I guess I kind of did all the choruses and most of the verses and of course the "BE PREPARED!" at the end of the song. Then the bad guy laughs; I don’t know why we laugh, but we always laugh … Everybody says that “Be Prepared” is their favorite villain song, so I have to go along with that.

MARIN: I was always alone [in the recording booth], except for one thing on the soundtrack, where we were doing background voices [for] the chorus of “Be Prepared.” That’s all we did, like, "Yeah! We’ll be prepared!" That was a big day because they were filming us for some promotional activity. I think that me and Whoopi, who’s an old old friend of mine, were in the studio at the same time.

I was like, “This is gonna be good.” Little did I know it would be the biggest [selling] CD in movie-musical history at the time. Disney was really gearing up that machine; they had reinvented their whole animation department and they were remarkable … Little did I know that in the first round, they sold 15 million CDs just in English.

SABELLA: The album came out and nobody told us. I heard about it, I ran into Tower Records, and I bought the album. I went home and listened to it; I was screaming in my apartment. I called Nathan and said, “You gotta get the album!” … [Then] he bought the album and we were calling each other, [saying] “Did you hear that cut? Did you hear that cut?”

WOOLVERTON: It definitely struck a chord in humankind, honestly. And people ask me that a lot, "What is it about Lion King?" It is the story, absolutely no question it’s the story. But a lot of it [also] has to do with the music. It was just such a beautiful combination of Elton John and this incredible African music and Tim Rice’s lyrics.

“Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is so Tim Rice for me. [I remember] the lyrics came through the fax machine and I looked at these lyrics and I was [blown away]. They were incredible.

Mancina also wrote a song for the scene where Simba, goaded by Rafiki, sees his father’s ghost in the sky. The track (co-written with Jay Rifkin) didn’t make it into the 1994 original, but got major placement in the Broadway musical as well as the 2019 remake.

MANCINA: I had this idea for a song and they didn’t want to know about it. They were like, "Elton John’s the songwriter, not you." [But] they held onto my song and then I showed it to Lebo M. and he said, "Let’s finish it." So, we finished it and it’s a song called “He Lives in You,” which is actually in the new movie … [Favreau] wanted it all in African … I don’t know which version they ended up using because we did several. We did one in English, one in African—we did one with kind of a blend between both. So, I think they went with the all African version. I’m pretty sure that’s what ended up in the movie ... As I understand it now, it’s in the end credits and they play the entire song, which is good.

SANDERS: If I was to say there was one of the things that I was extremely proud of that I worked on, it was the "Ghost of Mufasa" sequence. I had taken a swing at boarding it and I showed it to Roger and to Rob and they were very encouraging, but I think it’s fair to say they felt it could come up a notch or two. They just felt like it wasn’t a powerful enough thing. So, I went back to re-board and I found a piece of music from a movie called The Mission.

There’s an iconic piece of music from [that movie] that I boarded that sequence to. I threw it out and started again; I did these pastels and I tried to make it really come through. I wanted it to come alive. I remember the last night that I worked on it—I stayed up all night—and the next day ... I pitched it to them with this piece of music, and they liked it. That became the sequence that was in the movie. They liked the piece of music that accompanied the drawings so much, that they put that piece of music into the cut as a piece of scratch [music]

I went to the premiere in New York and at one point, Don Hahn came over and he said, "Hey, Chris! Do you wanna meet Hans Zimmer?" And I said, "Well, golly, sure." And I walked up to [Zimmer], we were standing outside of the theater, and Hans said, "You’re Chris?’"And I said, "Yeah." He said, "Chris for the ghost sequence?" [I said "yes"] and he said, "In the future, do me a favor. Please try to find a sh**ier piece of music. The music you chose is one of my favorite pieces of music." He said trying to one-up that piece of music was really hard. It was a bit of a compliment to my choice of music.

In terms of marketing, Disney made the unconventional move of turning the first few minutes of the movie into the official teaser trailer. The now-iconic "Circle of Life" sequence had a profound effect on the production crew, which was still worried over whether or not The Lion King would connect with audiences.

SANDERS: It all changed the day the day the music came in for "Circle of Life." We had heard the demo by Elton John and it was the words and the music, but it hadn’t been orchestrated for this African choir. It wasn’t fully formed. One day, Don Hahn came in and he said, "We have the first version of 'Circle of Life.' Do you wanna hear it?"

We all gathered around a cassette player and he stuck a cassette in the cassette player and he pushed play and we heard that opening song as a near-finished demo. This is the proper use of the word "awesome." All the sudden, everybody looked up, looked at each other and thought, "Wait a minute, what do we have here? Something magic just happened." … Hans Zimmer, he was the first guy that really turned on the lights and we saw what this space could be.

MANCINA: I will say "Circle of Life" is an amazing song and every time it’s performed, it brings tears to people’s eyes. It’s incredible.

CUMMINGS: At the premiere, I had still not scene the footage for the opening scene, "Circle of Life," and it just makes me cry. I well up. I was sitting there when the [music played] and all the animals come down to Pride Rock and bow down to the new king. I was sitting close to Don Hahn and I said, "Ok, we made a pretty good movie, didn’t we?"

SANDERS: There is a moment I will never forget when I went to a movie theater, I don’t remember the movie I was going to see. But I was surprised because The Lion King trailer was [attached] to that movie and so sitting there, I’m extremely familiar with the film at this point—I’ve been [working] on it every single day.

The lights went down and that voice came on and that big red sun rose on the horizon on the screen and I thought "Oh my gosh, it’s the trailer for the movie I’ve been working on!" The audience, which at that point they’re just sitting down, this is the time that they usually choose to ignore what’s on the screen, but something amazing happened.

[They became] completely silent, no one moved, they did the entire "Circle of Life" sequence as the trailer, which I think was a brilliant idea. When that trailer ended and that drumbeat came in and The Lion King title went up, there was like a standing ovation in that theater. People lost it. I thought, "Oh my god, we have something special here."

Once the movie was done, it was time to hold the premiere, but The Lion King didn’t have just one measly red carpet in Los Angeles. No, this was a feature that deserved a whopping three premieres on two separate coasts.

WOOLVERTON: At Radio City Music Hall [for the New York premiere], you could feel it. It was effervescent [and] I heard the people crying. This was the first time I had seen it with an audience and I had my 2-year-old with me, which was a little conflicting as a mother. And when I heard the people sniffling, I went, "Oh, yeah, we got em’. This is good."

MARIN: The [D.C.] after party, was at the National Zoo and I don’t know how they did it but they got the lions at the zoo to roar all night long. If I ever heard that roar in real life, I knew that very soon, I’m gonna die.

SABELLA: For the L.A. opening, they said, "We have a car, we’ll pick you up." The [drivers] had white gloves and I thought, "Oh my god, this is like a thousand, five thousand [dollars] a night." I didn’t grow up that way, we stayed at the Holiday Inn.

We’re being picked up and we’re going to the [premiere] and there’s a crowd outside, waving, screaming your name. How do they know my name? We get in and they said, "Follow us, we have reserved VIP seating." We were the last row in the balcony. There I them with Matthew Broderick and Jeremy Irons and Whoopie and we’re in the last row, I can hardly see the screen. I said "This is VIP seating?!"

CUMMINGS: I can tell you one thing, they kept the fart verse [in "Hakuna Matata"]. And I told Don [Hahn] at the premiere, I walked up to him and I said, "You kept the fart verse?!" He laughed up at the ceiling and said, "We had to! It was the funniest thing in the movie."

The Lion King roared into theaters on June 24, 1994. After years of development and production, Disney’s Serengeti-set take on Shakespeare was made available to the public. A smash hit with critics and general audiences alike, it went on to make over $968 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time.

SABELLA: I did not know it was going to be the biggest Disney movie ever made at the time. I had an apartment right off Broadway and the day it opened, I came downstairs, went down to Broadway, and there was a movie house with six screens. I looked up and it said Lion King, Lion King, Lion King, Lion King, Lion King, Lion King. I went, "WHAT?! Are you kidding me?!"

WOOLVERTON: I was just in awe. I remained in awe because the millennials are older [and] they grew up on this. They grew up with Simba bedsheets, it’s pretty amazing. I was in South Africa three or four years ago and once people heard that I had contributed to The Lion King, they would cry.

And now, with the tale of the original told, we come to the 2019 remake. Having launched the MCU with Iron Man in 2008, Jon Favreau proved himself most adept at pushing the boundaries of CGI with 2016’s reimagining of The Jungle Book. His hiring for the new Lion King was a no-brainer and this time, Disney knew exactly what it was dealing with.

Using the best motion-capture technology money can buy, the studio also splurged on some of the most talented people working in entertainment today: Donald Glover (Simba) Beyonce (Nala), Chiewetel Ejiofor (Scar), John Oliver (Zazu), John Kani, (Rafiki) Seth Rogen (Pumbaa), and Billy Eichner (Timon) to name a few. And, of course, James Earl Jones is back as Mufasa because, as it is with Darth Vader, no one else can even come close to voicing the character.

MINKOFF: Around the time Jon Favreau began to work on the remake, we coincidentally bumped into each other. We had met years before, so we were already acquainted. But we stopped and he pointed at me and I at him. He said, “I owe you a call.” And I replied, “Yes, you do.” So, we met for lunch and I opened up about the process of making the original animated film. I thought it best to be generous about it, believing the legacy of the film would only be enhanced if he succeeded in his efforts.

And he was quite respectful and expressed his appreciation of the work we’d done on the original.As we finished lunch, he invited me to the studio to see what they were doing. A few weeks later I took him up on the offer and was especially amazed using the VR headset to virtually fly around Pride Rock.

WOOLVERTON: I would guess that the people who voiced the characters this time around knew what they were a part of as opposed to back then, so the cast certainly took on these roles because they knew what they mean to people as opposed to way back [in the '90s] when we didn’t know what it was gonna be.

MARIN: I think classics, and if they are classics, they’ll be re-interpreted a couple times. There’s like 2-3 [adaptations] of Mutiny on the Bounty. There should be two, or three, or four Lion Kings ... If it’s great material and it’s connected to the audience and they embrace it, it’s a good thing. I have nothing against it and I’m all for remakes because they interpret it for the audience of the times.

SANDERS: This one is very strange to me because I’ve seen it referred to mostly as "the live-action version" which, of course, it’s animated, which is funny. The other thing I’ve noticed is that everything I have seen so far is a shot-for-shot remake, so I’m curious when I go see the film is to see if it is mostly a shot-for-shot remake, which means—at least story-wise—they didn’t have to spend any sleepless nights. We did all that. There was one night when we were rushing to get the end of the film together for the umpteenth time and there were like 10 of us working like crazy.

At one point, we ordered pizza and there were papers all over the floor. There [were] pizza boxes strewn everywhere. At three in the morning, I accidentally cut myself with an Exacto knife, so there was actual blood spilled. I think about that kind of work that went into figuring that story out and making it play well and I hope the people that made the remake appreciate how much stuff was done [by us].

SABELLA: Seth Rogen will be Pumbaa in the Lion King [remake]. I hope he wins an Oscar. I hope that movie does gangbusters. I know it’s not the last time that they’re gonna remake The Lion King. It’s a great story with great music. Thirty years from now, they’ll come up with a new way to make [another] movie [out of it]. I’ve been blessed to be part of the original.

CUMMINGS: I can’t wait to see it. It’s kind of weird because people call it "live-action" and I was thinking it’s probably about as live-action as the first one … It looks amazing. People say, "Why are they bothering if they’re just redrawing the whole thing?" I don’t know if they’re changing it. Even if it’s the exact replica with computer graphics, I’m gonna go see it.

MANCINA: I love animation, I think animation is so magical, that I’m hopeful that [the life-like CGI] isn’t gonna replace animation. I don’t think it is. I just think it’s a new way of doing something, fresh way of doing something that was already seen …The way that they have done this movie is pretty spectacular. I think for new generations of people, it’s just gonna blow their minds.

I get the impression from [Favreau] that he goes with his gut. He’s one of those kind of guys … When they don’t feel something is right, they don’t really wanna be talked out of that feeling because they’re trying to trust that feeling. And so, I think he’s a very instinctual guy; I think he listens, he’s very smart, and I think he cares very deeply about the storytelling and I think it’s really beautiful. It’s beautifully done. I wish them best of luck with it, for sure.

Then there’s the legacy of the original to think about. The importance of this film for many people is not lost on those individuals who helped make it. Just about every day, they’re humbled by run-ins with fans, both old and new.

WOOLVERTON: I’m really proud of having shaped the tale out of these disparate elements and the story that I was able to conjure up from what Jeffrey needed to feel to be satisfied for himself; to find himself in it. So, the shaping of the grand epic tale [as well as] the relationship between the Pride and how wonderful that is. And Scar! Scar’s pretty cool.

[Fans] tear up. It’s not me. It’s what the movie is. What the movie means to people. Because I was a part of the origin of it, people are so moved when they talk about it. They tear up, it’s astonishing and moving and humbling for me, too.

MANCINA: It’s so iconic. I think sometimes when people talk to me about it, they can’t really fathom that I really worked on it. They just can’t believe that "Hakuna Matata" was a song that I did in Huntingon Beach in my little bedroom. They just can’t imagine it; it doesn’t sound right. I think it’s always kind of blown people’s minds because it’s known all over the world, which is fun. It’s changed my life. It’s made me very very independent.

CUMMINGS: I’ll go to a Comic Con or something like that and they’ll bring a picture of Ed or a still from the movie or a doll. And people, they come up to my table and they’re kinda grinning and if they’re young enough, they’re giggling the whole time and it’s very sweet; it’s very cute; very endearing. A little eight-year-old will go, “Would you laugh like Ed?” I’ll do the laugh and they’ll go into hysterics for about two minutes, and it’s nice to see that much happiness.

MARIN: As younger generations come in and don’t know me from anything else—or don’t know me at all; they have no idea of Cheech and Chong. I remember this friend of mine, she had these two young twin daughters and she [introduced them to me, saying] "This is my friend Cheech and he acts in movies." One of the girls says, "Well, what have you been in?" So I said, "Well, uh, I was in The Lion King" and I start doing the voice for them and it was like Brad Pitt showed up.

They just looked at me with their mouths open like "Wowwwww." And they’re just starting to put it together, like how could a person be that voice and be a hyena at the same time? But they heard that voice and they know that voice. They know it because they’ve seen the movie a hundred times. It was really interesting to see that process.

SABELLA: I love seeing the faces of kids who are just dumbstruck. To this day, [people ask me to talk to their kids]. They could be 12, they could be 20 and I’ll say "Hakuna Matata" and they’re like, "Oh my god, no way!" I love that …I’ll be 70 in September and I would love to be a Disney legend. That’s what I’m hoping for.

Circle of Life: An Oral History Of ‘The Lion King’ For Its 25th Anniversary (2024)
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