This month’s remake of The Lion King is aware of what it wants to be: the exact thing as the 1994 version, but glossier. With now-iconic characters, a pointy wit, and a memorable soundtrack furnished by Elton John, the unique Lion King has a legacy that left little room for improvement. The film’s $188 million establishing weekend tells us the whole thing approximately how the film appears 25 years later.
But in the early ’90s, in the course of Disney’s Broadway-worthy fairy story increase, no one working at the original film had a clue what The Lion King might look or sound like. First pitched in 1988, the film’s tone was in regular flux within the years leading to launch, which is why, as a minimum for some stretch of improvement, The Lion King turned into almost an ABBA musical.
In the early degrees of determining the track, composer Tim Rice contacted the Swedish Europop group to make the movie’s music. Rice had labored with ABBA contributors Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus at the musical Chess, and pursuing the tune for the movie project seemed like a logical progression. The relaxation of the manufacturing group wasn’t so satisfied.
“It became an actual head-scratcher for numerous us,” says Lion King manufacturer Don Hahn. “But they couldn’t do it. There had been conflicts — they got a tour or a brand new album they had been running on or something. His next concept become Elton John, which to a point also become a head-scratcher because he hadn’t done a musical earlier than.”
Rice recommended Elton John as a best case, this-would-be-completely-excellent-however-would-Elton-John-even-say-sure situation, now not completely convinced that the musician could say yes. He turned into too busy, Rice thought, and additionally hadn’t achieved a film in pretty a while.
In The Lion King’s unique manufacturing notes, government producer Tom Schumacher remembers the technique of having Elton John concerned. “We had been terrified at the start to even method him because we notion he is probably extraordinarily busy or hard to work with,” he says.
“I honestly jumped on the risk due to the fact I knew that Disney changed into a class act, and I preferred the tale line and the humans immediately,” John says inside the notes.
With the musician on board, the group started out pleasant-tuning the film’s overall sound. But whilst both John and Rice have been proficient musicians and songwriters, with hit information and spoil musicals to their names, they’d a hassle cracking the tracklist.
“They had no feel of Africa or what we wanted to do with the song,” explains Hahn, recounting how the duo researched suggestions for the soundtrack. “We had been paying attention to Graceland, the Paul Simon Album. We’ve been listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the South African vocal groups that had been at the Graceland album, and loads of Soweto South African song.”
Even with the muse, Rice and John struggled to discover the right sound for the movie. Then, the production team tapped Zimmer for the task. Though the composer had achieved essential success with Rain Man’s ratings in 1988 and Driving Miss Daisy in 1989, he was chosen for his paintings on the decrease-profile The Power of One, a film approximately an English South African boy raised within the center of apartheid.
“The entrance of Hans Zimmer into the musical equation was definitely the turning factor that gave us that final sound that the film has,” says Hahn.
Zimmer — who went on to win his first Academy Award for The Lion King — had already made a call for himself. However, in comparison to Elton John’s prolific legacy, he becomes still simply beginning out.
“Hans had an actual choice to make,” Hahn recollects. “He decided early on he could either be intimidated via Elton’s music and live near it or do something that he really felt personally become right for the movie. And he selected the latter. I think it becomes a totally ambitious choice for him to do this due to the fact anybody could have been intimidated by way of Elton’s legacy and all of the things he had completed.”
