New live action ‘Lion King’ film with Jon Favreau, adds ‘Catch Me If You Can’ writer
Deadline broke the news that Jeff Nathanson has been hired to write the screenplay for Disney’s live-action adaptation of the animated classic, The Lion King.
The new film will be directed by Jon Favreau, who is coming off amazing success with the blockbuster The Jungle Book, a visually stunning live-action version based on the popular Disney film.
Nathanson (Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can,The Terminal, the Rush Hour films and Tower Heist) “…now joins the push to update and reinvent Disney’s classics for a contemporary audience. The latest, Jungle Book, a CGI/live-action marvel, has grossed $966.2M worldwide,” adds Deadline.
Collider claims that “The plan for The Lion King is not to make a live-action film, but one that looks live-action. The movie will build on the technology and aesthetic that Favreau established with The Jungle Book, which used a single live-action actor and minimal real elements and filled the rest in with stunning visual effects. The result was incredibly lifelike animals and, in retrospect, a proof-of-concept for a new Lion King movie, not to mention a worldwide box office gross of $966.2 million.”
“Next in the pipeline is Beauty And The Beast with Emma Watson and Dan Stevens, set for March 17, 2017. In similar fashion to that film, the live-action Lion King will include songs from the original animated pic.”
Disney and Favreau are also in development on a Jungle Book sequel.
The 1994 film earned nearly a billion dollars, $968.8M, to be one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, even getting a Broadway musical adaptation which won six Tonys in 1997 and is still going strong, with 23 global productions having been seen by more than 85 million people.
Jelani Remy as “Simba” and the ensemble in “He Lives in You” from THE LION KING National Tour. Photo: Joan Marcus ©Disney. courtesy of Straz Center
