The director of The Lion King: Mufasa was about to turn down the offer, saying, ''A prequel won't work''

He was only planning to read five pages of the script, but couldn't stop himself from thinking, "This is great."

Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios

"A prequel to The Lion King can't work." Barry Jenkins, the director of the ultra-live-action version of The Lion King: Mufasa, which depicts young Mufasa and Scar, also initially thought the same and was about to turn down the offer. He revealed this on GamesRadar+ in the UK. This film is the latest spin-off from the ultra-live-action version of The Lion King (2019), based on Disney's classic animation The Lion King (1994). However, movie fans and critics never expected that Jenkins, who won an Academy Award for Moonlight (2016), would work on this film. The director himself thought the same when he received the offer in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"My agent called me and said, 'Disney has sent me a proposal for a prequel to The Lion King.' I said, 'No, that's impossible.' I hadn't even read the script yet." What changed his mind was that when he was about to turn down the offer, his partner, director Lulu Wang of The Farewell (2019), recommended that he read the script first. "I thought I'd read five pages, but after reading about 45 pages, I said to her, 'Wow, this is good,' and finished reading it the next day. As someone who knows The Lion King well, I was shocked by how much I thought I knew, and how many things I thought were cliché about the characters and themes. I was also surprised that I had gotten rid of many of those things and found many similarities with my own work."

This film tells the untold story of Simba's father, King Mufasa, and the villain Scar (the hawk), long before Simba became king. Mufasa, an orphan, and Taka, a pure and innocent prince, are bound together by a bond of brotherhood beyond blood ties and set out on a journey to protect their flock from the ruthless lions, but an event that divides their fate occurs there... The screenplay was written by Jeff Nathanson, who was also highly praised for the biographical film Young Woman and Sea (2024) starring Daisy Ridley.

Jenkins says that the common thread between his previous works and The Lion King: Mufasa is "the bond between brothers, family not based on blood ties, admiration, community, and a certain kind of legacy." "Then there's the really deep things that are spoken or not spoken by the characters." Jenkins accepted the offer, but he was greatly inspired by the performance of Jeremy Irons, who played Scar in the original version of The Lion King. "(The original version) is a film made for a young audience, so it is intended to teach a clear lesson. It is very dualistic, with good and evil, black and white. But when I listen to Jeremy's performance, I can clearly see the pain and wounds in his heart. Hatred has a history and depth. At that moment, I thought, 'I can rely on this when making the prequel.'"

The young Mufasa will be played by Aaron Pierre, who also teamed up with Jenkins in "The Underground Railroad" (2021), and Taka/Scar will be played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. from "Cyrano" (2021). Tiffany Boone will play the young Sarabi, and Mads Mikkelsen will play the lion Kiros. Donald Glover and Beyonce Knowles-Carter will reprise their roles as Simba and Nala, respectively, from the previous film. Beyonce's daughter Blue Ivy Carter has been cast as Simba and Nala's daughter Kiara. The film "The Lion King: Mufasa" will be released in theaters on Friday, December 20, 2024.