Disney's The Lion King Remake: 8 Things They Must Do To Nail It

2. Use The Most Important Songs (Or Elements Of Them)

While it absolutely makes sense to axe a good portion of the music from the Lion King remake (like The Jungle Book), it's quite hard to imagine a Lion King movie without even a couple of those classic beats. In fact, if you take certain ones away, the film doesn't work quite as well - music and narrative are so tightly woven here that to lose some of the songs would only serve to lessen the movie's emotional effect.

Let's start with Circle Of Life - it literally shows the birth of our protagonist in one of the most uplifting moments in cinematic history. How else are Favreau and co. meant to reveal Simba in such a majestic, awe-inspiring fashion? Later on, Can You Feel The Love Tonight is essentially the song that turns Simba into a man, helping him move on from his traumatic past and accept his role as king. How else can all that be portrayed in such a cohesive, concise fashion?

And, crucially, the one thing that both these songs have in common is that the animals don't sing them (Timon and Pumbaa do hit a few bars of Can You Feel The Love Tonight, but they're easily cut out). This means that the remake can avoid the potentially bewildering feeling of watching a realistic animal belt out a pop-culture classic, and can instead play snippets of the most important songs over the top of the on-screen action. It's win/win.