The Lion King/Production

==Development==
The idea for The Lion King was conceived in late 1988 during a conversation between Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy E. Disney and Peter Schneider on a plane to Europe to promote Oliver & Company. During the conversation, the topic of a story set in Africa came up, and Katzenberg immediately jumped at the idea.[8] The idea was then developed by Walt Disney Feature Animation's vice president for creative affairs Charlie Fink.[9] Katzenberg decided to add elements involving coming of age and death, and ideas from personal life experiences, such as some of his trials in his bumpy road in politics, saying about the film, "It is a little bit about myself."[10] In November of that year Thomas Disch (author of The Brave Little Toaster) wrote a treatment entitled King of the Kalahari,[11] and afterwards, Linda Woolverton spent a year writing drafts of the script, which was titled King of the Beasts and then King of the Jungle.[9] The original version of the film was very different from the final film. The plot was centered in a battle being between lions and baboons with Scar being the leader of the baboons, Rafiki being a cheetah,[10] and Timon and Pumbaa being Simba's childhood friends.[12] Simba would also not leave the kingdom but become a "lazy, slovenly, horrible character" due to manipulations from Scar, so Simba could be overthrown after coming of age. By 1990, producer Thomas Schumacher, who had just completed The Rescuers Down Under, decided to attach himself to the project "because lions are cool".[9] Schumacher likened the script for King of the Jungle to "an animated National Geographic special".[13]
Oliver & Company director George Scribner was the initial director of the film,[14] being later joined by Roger Allers, who was the lead story man on Beauty and the Beast in October 1991.[8] Allers brought with him Brenda Chapman, who would become the head of story.[9] Afterwards, several of the lead crew members, including Allers, Scribner, Hahn, Chapman, and production designer Chris Sanders, took a trip to Hell's Gate National Park in Kenya, in order to study and gain an appreciation of the environment for the film.[15] After six months of story development work Scribner decided to leave the project, as he clashed with Allers and the producers on their decision to turn the film into a musical, as Scribner's intention was of making a documentary-like film more focused on natural aspects.[8][16] Rob Minkoff replaced Scribner,[15] and producer Don Hahn joined the production as Schumacher became only an executive producer due to Disney promoting him to Vice President of Development for Feature Animation.[13] Hahn found the script unfocused and lacking a clear theme, and after establishing the main theme as "leaving childhood and facing up to the realities of the world", asked for a final retool. Allers, Minkoff, Chapman, and Hahn then rewrote the story across two weeks of meetings with directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, who had just finished Beauty and the Beast.[15] The script also had its title changed from King of the Jungle to The Lion King, as the setting was not the jungle but the savannah.[8] It was also decided to make Scar and Mufasa brothers since the writers felt that it was much more interesting if the threat came from someone within the family.[17]
The Lion King was the first Disney animated feature to be an original story, rather than be based on an already existing work. The filmmakers have said that the story of The Lion King was inspired by the lives of Joseph and Moses, from the Bible, and William Shakespeare's Hamlet.[17] During the summer of 1992, the team was joined by screenwriter Irene Mecchi, with a second screenwriter, Jonathan Roberts, joining a few months later. Mecchi and Roberts took charge of the revision process, fixing unresolved emotional issues in the script and adding a comic business for Pumbaa, Timon, and the hyenas.[5] Lyricist Tim Rice worked closely with the writing team, flying to California at least once a month because his songs needed to work in the narrative continuity. Rice's lyrics—which were reworked up to the production's end—were pinned to the storyboards during development.[15] Rewrites were frequent, with animator Andreas Deja saying that completed scenes would be delivered, only for the response to be that parts needed to be reanimated because of dialog changes.[9]
==Casting==
The voice actors were chosen for how they fit and could add to the characters—for instance, James Earl Jones was cast because the directors found his voice "powerful" and similar to a lion's roar.[18] Jones commented that during the years of production, Mufasa "became more and more of a dopey dad instead of [a] grand king".[19]
Nathan Lane originally auditioned for Zazu, and Ernie Sabella for one of the hyenas. Upon meeting each other at the recording studio, the actors, who at the time both co-starred in Guys and Dolls, were asked to record together as hyenas. The directors laughed at their performance and decided to cast them as Timon and Pumbaa.[18][20] For the hyenas, the original intention was to reunite Cheech & Chong, but while Cheech Marin accepted to play Banzai, Tommy Chong was unavailable. Thus his role was changed into a female hyena, Shenzi, who was voiced by Whoopi Goldberg.[12]
Matthew Broderick was cast as adult Simba early during production, and during the three years of voice acting only recorded with another actor once, and only discovered Moira Kelly voiced Nala at the premiere.[21] English actors Tim Curry and Malcolm McDowell were originally considered for the role of Scar,[22] however, it was ultimately won by English actor Jeremy Irons.[23] Irons initially refused the role due to not being comfortable going from the dramatic performance as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune to a comedic role. But once he came in, Irons' performance inspired the writers to incorporate more of his acting as von Bülow—adding one of that character's lines, "You have no idea"—and inspired animator Andreas Deja to watch both Reversal of Fortune and Damage to pick up Irons's facial traits and tics.
==Animation==
The development of The Lion King coincided with that of Pocahontas, which most of the animators of Walt Disney Feature Animation decided to work on instead, believing it would be the more prestigious and successful of the two.[17] The story artists also did not have much faith in the project, with Chapman declaring she was reluctant to accept the job "because the story wasn't very good",[9] and writer Burny Mattinson saying to co-worker Joe Ranft "I don't know who is going to want to watch that one."[16][self-published source] Most of the leading animators either were doing their first major work supervising a character, or had much interest in animating an animal.[10] Thirteen of these supervising animators, both in California and in Florida, were responsible for establishing the personalities and setting the tone for the film's main characters. The animation leads for the main characters included Mark Henn on young Simba, Ruben A. Aquino on adult Simba, Andreas Deja on Scar, Aaron Blaise on young Nala, Anthony DeRosa on adult Nala, and Tony Fucile on Mufasa.[5] Nearly 20 minutes of the film, including the "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" sequence,[12] was animated at the Disney-MGM Studios facility. More than 600 artists, animators, and technicians contributed to The Lion King.[14] Weeks before the film was to be released, the 1994 Northridge earthquake shut down the studio and required the animators to finish their work from home.[25]
The character animators studied real-life animals for reference, as was done for the 1942 Disney film Bambi. Jim Fowler, renowned wildlife expert, visited the studios on several occasions with an assortment of lions and other savannah inhabitants to discuss behavior and help the animators give their drawings authenticity.[15] The animators also studied animal movements at the Miami MetroZoo under guidance from wildlife expert Ron Magill.[26] The Pride Lands are modeled on the Kenyan national park visited by the crew. Varied focal lengths and lenses were employed to differ from the habitual portrayal of Africa in documentaries—which employ telephoto lenses to shoot the wildlife from a distance. The epic feel drew inspiration from concept studies by artist Hans Bacher—who, following Scribner's request for realism, tried to depict effects such as lens flare—and the works of painters Charles Marion Russell, Frederic Remington and Maxfield Parrish.[15][27] Art director Andy Gaskill and the filmmakers sought to give the film a sense of grand sweep and epic scale similar to David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Gaskill explained: "We wanted audiences to sense the vastness of the savannah and to feel the dust and the breeze swaying through the grass. In other words, to get a real sense of nature and to feel as if they were there. It's very difficult to capture something as subtle as a sunrise or rain falling on a pond, but those are the kinds of images that we tried to get." The filmmakers also watched the films of John Ford and other filmmakers, which also influenced the design of the film.[28]
Because the characters were not anthropomorphized, all the animators had to learn to draw four-legged animals, and the story and character development was done through the use of longer shots following the characters.[12]
Computers helped the filmmakers present their vision in new ways. For the "wildebeest stampede" sequence, several distinct wildebeest characters were created in a 3D computer program, multiplied into hundreds, cel shaded to look like drawn animation, and given randomized paths down a mountainside to simulate the real, unpredictable movement of a herd.[29] Five specially trained animators and technicians spent more than two years creating the two-and-a-half-minute stampede.[5] The Computer Animation Production System helped simulate camera movements such as tracking shots, and was employed in coloring, lighting, and particle effects.
Category:Production