Disney's The Lion King Remake: Casting All 10 Major Roles

5. Pumbaa (John C. Reilly)

John C Reilly The Promotion
Dimension Films

Pumbaa's childish, jokey persona - despite him seemingly being a fully-grown, adult warthog - was a juxtaposition that worked really well in the original Lion King. And if there's one actor out there that thrives when it comes to bringing a juvenile, oblivious brand of humour to adult characters, it's John C. Reilly.

The evidence is in his filmography. Step Brothers, where he played a forty-something man-child with a severe case of arrested development; Talladega Nights, with his role as a grown man who wears pink underwear and likes to play with G.I. Joe toys; even Wreck-It-Ralph, a character whose size (and name) are in direct contrast with his lovable heart of gold.

And that's Pumbaa in a nutshell. He looks tough, with his sharp tusks and his sheer bulk, but inside, he's friendly, caring and downright endearing.

Chances Of It Happening

Reilly is consistently reliable whether he's doing comedy, drama, sci-fi or animation, so making the jump to a motion capture/voicework hybrid shouldn't prove to be an issue.

That being said, he does have Wreck-It-Ralph 2 on the cards, another Disney movie that will probably shoot around the same time as The Lion King. The two projects may be too similar - and too close together - for Reilly to undertake both.

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Contributor

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!