Circle of live: The Lion King goes live-action for Disney

The Jungle Book director Jon Favreau has teamed up again with Walt Disney to reimagine one of the studio’s biggest hits, The Lion King.

This marks the latest in a string of live-action updates of Disney classics including Cinderella, Pete’s Dragon, the forthcoming Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book, which grossed close to $1bn worldwide this year – almost matching The Lion King’s box office tally in 1994.

Before Disney officially announced the project, Favreau hinted at the news on Twitter:

In a statement that followed, Disney confirmed that The Lion King live-action update had been put on the “fast track to production”.

Like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King is to include songs from the animated film, written by Elton John and Tim Rice. Favreau’s update of The Jungle Book featured variations of songs from the original.

John and Rice’s ballad Can You Feel the Love Tonight won best original song at the 1995 Academy awards – while the soundtrack has sold over 14m copies. The popular Julie Taymor-directed stage production, which made its Broadway debut in 1997 and still runs today, won six Tony awards.

Unlike the animated films Disney has remade till now, The Lion King features no human characters, raising the question of how the film will look compared to the studio’s other live-action reimaginings.

Favreau is also reportedly working on a sequel to The Jungle Book with the same creative team.

As of yet, there’s no release date set for Favreau’s take on The Lion King. Disney’s next live-action remake, Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens, opens 17 March 2017.