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

by Danny Meegan

1. Don't Be Slaves To The Original Story

Lion King
Disney

Let's assume for a second that Favreau's The Lion King tells the exact same story as the original, hitting the same beats in the same order and portraying those beats in the same way visually. Aren't both films then exactly the same, with the remake just animated in a fancier way? We'll essentially have two animated versions of the same film on our Blu-Ray shelf, rendering the remake pointless.

So let's see Disney shake things up, even just a little! There are actually a couple of areas of The Lion King that would be ripe for altering in the remake.

Chief among these is the scene, midway through Hakuna Matata, where Simba just morphs from a cub into an adult in a matter of seconds. Since The Lion King is about Simba's transition from vulnerable youngling to strong leader, it doesn't make sense to literally skip over his growth, but the remake has an opportunity to expand here. Elsewhere, Timon and Pumbaa were never really anything more than the two-dimensional comic-relief, so it could be logical to incorporate elements of their backstory from The Lion King 1.5, just to flesh them out a little bit.

The remake is facing a monster of an uphill battle from day one - what can it offer us that's different? It doesn't even have the novelty of seeing a real human interact with CGI animals, like The Jungle Book had. Instead, Disney - and Favreau - should look to the story department for innovation, getting as creative as possible in order to help justify this remake's existence.

Are you looking forward to the Lion King remake? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!