Director Barry Jenkins on ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’

In Mufasa: The Lion King, which roars into theaters on Friday, fans will explore the unlikely rise of the king of the Pride Lands.

Told in flashbacks, the story introduces Mufasa as an orphaned cub, lost and alone until he meets a sympathetic lion named Taka - the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destiny - their bonds will be tested as they work together to evade a threatening and deadly foe.

While expanding on the groundbreaking VFX of the 2019 The Lion King, Mufasa also introduces new characters, features returning favorites like Simba, Nala, and Timone & Pumba, and shows off characters, such as Rafiki, like you've never seen them before. Not to mention, it also features new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda

In Mufasa, Academy Award® winning director Barry Jenkins deftly navigates the twists and turns of expanding on the beloved story of The Lion King. He sat down to share his experiences with the story, why audiences need to see it in theaters, and his inspiration for crafting the pulse-pounding action sequences in Mufasa.

What drew you to the story of the original animated The Lion King when you saw it for the first time?

I was actually drawn to the original because I was babysitting my nephews. This is back in the nineties and you have all these VHS tapes lying around and you're trying to figure out what is going to hold these kids attention the most, and the 1994 Lion King was always the one that did.

At first I was watching them watch the movie, and then I began to watch it with them. And I was amazed in the center of that film, as we all know, is this really intense scene where Simba has to walk up to Mufasa in the aftermath of his death. And I just thought it was a really intentional, very honest thing for children to experience. And it was kind of like a magic trick, how safe it felt for these boys to be watching this. And I think it helped them process some very complex emotions for the first time. I thought that was just a really amazing thing to achieve.

Director Barry Jenkins attends the UK Premiere of Mufasa: The Lion King

Why did you want to expand on that story in the way that you did with Mufasa?

When I signed on to this project, it was about, I believe 25, 26 years into the life of The Lion King. And for those 26 years, the idea of who Mufasa was and the idea of who Scar was, was pretty much set in stone. One of them is like the perfect depiction of good, of greatness, being a great leader, being a great father. And the other is the exact opposite.

And when I read the script by Jeff Nathanson, I was just amazed at how much more complex the life of these characters were. I referred to my nephews watching this movie and seeing them experience this very intense emotion in just a really deep and safe way, and here I was being gifted an opportunity to explore just as complex, just as deep emotions in a whole new way.

(L-R): Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre) and Taka (voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.) in Mufasa: The Lion King

Why do you think this story has resonated both worldwide and for so long since the first movie?

I think it comes back to the honesty of some of the emotions that are being explored in the original Lion King and in the Broadway musical - which I hadn't seen before I got this job. And then I was like "I need to go see that," and I did.

It's interesting, we made this film with a very new sort of technology, and the stage production of The Lion King is one of the oldest technologies. This is one of the first ways how we communally receive drama. And yet you have these people with costumes and it's flipping over their head and back. And for children who know this 2D animation, it could be very off putting. But instead, all those things disappear purely because the emotions are just so clear, they're so honest, they're so forthright.

And I think the thing that The Lion King does that makes it translatable and makes it travel and makes it a singular emotional experience across cultures, across language barriers, is this honesty of the way it deals with the human condition. It also doesn't belittle the emotional complexity of children, in particular. I think that's a really wonderful thing to aspire to. It's what's given the story its staying power.

30 Years of The Lion King's Enduring Legacy at Disney

What were the opportunities that the technology established from the 2019 The Lion King afforded you?

Because we are working in the footsteps of the 2019 film, just like with the story, there was already a head start. All the same animators who worked on that film worked on this film, so a lot of the lessons they learned in that movie, they could apply to the making of this one. So for me, I could just express how I wanted things to feel because they weren't trying to figure out how things literally needed to come into being.

What I loved about this live action animation is that we built everything in virtual three dimension, and then we got to go in with our cameras and respond in real time to those things. So rather than predetermining where the camera needed to be based on what I imagined a character would be doing in a scene, we could see the character doing the thing in the scene in real time, because we ultimately got the animators into suits to actually be moving through the scene as the lions, as a rough draft of the animation, and our camera could respond to that in real time. It just brought an aliveness to me, to the way the film is photographed, the way it's captured. In the film that we've ended up with, this version of The Lion King, the way the characters respond to one another in these person-to-person - lion-to-lion - conversations that we have, they take on this more humanistic quality.

One of the things I came out of the movie thinking was Barry Jenkins: Action Director.

I didn't anticipate that from reading the script because an action set piece in the script would just be a few lines. But again, I started to really understand what was possible with the technology.

I grew up watching these great action films that people like John McTiernan or Ridley Scott, as well as [Disney Legend] James Cameron, and Jon De Bon, and Renny Harlin directed. I think action works best when it's motivated by character, when it's serving the themes. And I do feel like in this film, our action set pieces are absolutely serving the character. I feel like my job was to make those set pieces really sort of be in communion with the themes of both this film and the legacy of the franchise.

Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre) in Disney's live-action Mufasa: The Lion King

Why do audiences need to see Mufasa: The Lion King on the big screen?

I think The Lion King is so singularly a part of culture and global culture. There are very few things that have that level of penetration across languages, across cultures. For 30 years, people have experienced these characters, these themes in one way. They've known them in a very fixed state. And I think communally, getting together, going to a cinema, sitting in a theater, the lights come down, and I think there's something about the charge, the sharing of that energy and then going on this journey and knowing that - for me at least - the 30 years of relationship you've built with these characters and this legacy is going to be deepened and respected and carried forth in a way that I think is truly quite moving

Because of that, I hope people go out in droves and packs and watch this thing together and learn these new songs and sing them, but also come away with the really deepened appreciation of who these characters were.

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