Directed by Jon Favreau and written by Jeff Nathanson, this new telling of the 1994 Disney classic The Lion King uses new techniques and technologies to bring the story to life in a whole new way. As a young lion cub, Simba (voiced by Donald Glover) idolizes his father, King Mufasa (voiced by the great James Earl Jones), while Scar (voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor), Mufasa’s brother and former heir to the throne, looks to seize the crown that he feels he’s owed. And after family tragedy strikes, resulting in Simba’s exile, the young lion must take a new path to his royal destiny, with help from newfound friends Pumbaa (voiced by Seth Rogen) and Timon (voiced by Billy Eichner), as well as pride mate Nala (voiced by Beyoncé Knowles-Carter).

During a conference at the film’s Los Angeles press day, co-stars Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner, along with filmmaker Jon Favreau, talked about how the technology evolved to the point that it made this film possible, the collaborative environment that they all worked in together, making the characters their own, improvisation, how that Beauty and the Beast moment came about, using a VR system to place everyone directly into the environment they were creating, and how they translated the actors’ performances to their characters.

Question:  Jon, you’ve said previously that you wanted to do The Lion King because you felt that you had cracked the code in The Jungle Book. So, what was it that you felt you’d figured out, that enabled you to do this film?

JON FAVREAU:  I’ve been working on these movies (The Jungle Book and The Lion King), back to back, for about six years, and all of the new technology that was available, I had finally learned how to use it, by the end of The Jungle Book. A lot of attention is paid to the technology, but these are handmade films. There are animators working on every shot and every environment that you see in the film. There’s one shot that’s a real photographic shot, but everything else is built from scratch by artists, and we had a great team assembled. So, the idea of using what we learned on [The Jungle Book], and the new technologies that were available to make a story like The Lion King, with its great music, great characters and great story, seemed like a wonderful, logical conclusion, so that’s what we set out to do.

the-lion-king-movie-poster

How long did you work on The Lion King? 

FAVREAU:  I’ve been working about three years on it, and a lot of [the cast has] been working for the same amount of time. They first came in, back when it was in pencils, so it was a huge leap of faith for this fantastic cast that we have. In many cases, they kept coming back and recording again and trying new things, especially with the comedy bits. So, this isn’t one of those things where I’ve been toiling away alone. It’s been a huge raft of artists and people who were involved with developing the musical landscape of it, doing early recordings, and coming in and contributing through improvisation, and re-doing and re-writing scenes. This team isn’t just a bunch of people that recorded one time. They’re all people who were collaborators and filmmakers, along with me.

Donald, what did you want to bring to this version of Simba?

DONALD GLOVER:  Jon was really good about the Circle of Life having a major hand in it. I really feel that it’s good to make movies that are global and metropolitan, in the sense of the citizens of the world, and making sure that we talk about how connected we are right now because it’s the first time that we’ve really been able to talk to everybody, at the same time. It’s a necessary thing, and I felt like he was really good about talking about that, from the beginning. He did that on The Jungle Book, too.

You’ve said that your son was very excited about seeing the film. What did you tell him, going into it?

GLOVER:  I didn’t tell him anything. I really didn’t. It’s his favorite movie. I was like, “I’ll just wait until he gets there.” Somehow, he found out about it, but still didn’t know that I was in it. He was just like, “The one with Beyoncé?” And then, during the movie, he was like, “Dad’s in this, too?! Great! Bonus!”

Chiwetel, this Scar is way more similar to the stage version of Scar, and we get a lot more of his backstory. Is that what drove you to him?

CHIWETEL EJIOFOR:  I felt that it was just really interesting to go into that psychology, and to really try to uncover that and look at it. I’m a huge fan of what was done before, like everybody else, by Jeremy Irons, so I went back in and explored  that character again, from a slightly different perspective, to see what was there. It’s such an incredible part to play, and so complex. It was about having empathy, not sympathy, and empathizing with the character, trying to understand him, and trying to get underneath that. It’s such a rich, villainous character to play, and it was a wonderful experience for me.

the-lion-king-simba-scar
Image via Disney

How did you approach making Scar your own and doing the song, “Be Prepared”?

EJIOFOR:  In so many ways, the original is just this extraordinary event. It’s so iconic. It’s exciting to even get the opportunity to begin a journey like this and to go into any of these characters, and the part of Scar is an extraordinary part to play. In a way, you just approach it the same way that you approach any other part. You identify with the character, you look at the psychology of the character, and you place yourself into those circumstances, and that creates its own individual slant. Along with everybody else, I loved the original, but you want to make  it your own and you create that individuality to it, in that way.

Billy and Seth, you guys steal just about every scene that you’re in because you’re so hilarious. How much of that was you improvising?

SETH ROGEN:  There was a lot of improvisation with Billy. We were actually together, every time that we recorded, which is a very rare gift to have, as someone who is trying to be funny in an animated film. I’ve done that a lot, and you’re often just alone in there. I think you can really tell that we’re playing off of each other. It’s an incredibly naturalistic feeling. And they really captured Billy. That’s what’s amazing. He essentially played himself on a TV show, for years, and this character is somehow more Billy than that character. It’s remarkable to me how his character specifically makes me laugh so hard.

BILLY EICHNER:  I wish I was as cute, in real life, as I am in the movie. The Timon they designed is so adorable, and the juxtaposition of my personality in that little Timon body really works. And I can’t imagine, looking back on it now, not being in the room together, and being able to riff off each other and really discover our chemistry together, in the same moment. You can feel it when you’re watching the movie. [When I saw the movie,] I was shocked by how much of the riffing actually ended up in the movie, and I think it works. It feels very unique to other movies in this genre, which can often feel a bit canned.

ROGEN:  The fact that it has like a looseness applied to probably the most technologically incredible movie ever made is an amazing contrast. It feels like people in a room, just talking, and then, it’s refined to a degree that is like inconceivable, in a lot of ways. That mixture is what I think is so incredible, and that’s what Jon really captured, in an amazing way.

Who came up with the Beauty and the Beast moment?

EICHNER:  Jon Favreau. 

ROGEN:  Yeah, it was Jon.

FAVREAU:  For that gag that references another Disney property, I drew inspiration from the stage show. They threw in a joke about Frozen, that must have happened after Frozen went on Broadway. So, we wanted to [reference] another live-action adaptation of a Disney animated classic in the film.

the-lion-king-jon-favreau-caleb-deschanel
Image via Disney

Jon, you created a VR game for this, for everyone to play around in, right?

FAVREAU:  That was one of the big differences between this and The Jungle Book. In The Jungle Book, we were essentially using the same motion capture technology for performers and cameras, as had been developed 10 years prior for Avatar. But towards the end of that, there was a whole slew of consumer facing VR products that were hitting the scene. We started experimenting with it at the end of The Jungle Book and realized that we could build this really cool system of filmmaking using game engine technology and this new VR technology. We essentially were writing code, as we were going, for a multi-player VR filmmaking game. That way, I could bring in people who don’t have any background in visual effects, and we would design the entire environment. We took all of the recordings that we had from the actors, and we would animate it within the game engine. The crew would be able to put on the headsets, go in, scout, and actually set cameras within VR, and whenever anybody visited, I would pop them into the equipment.

So, what are the chances you’ll release that VR game in stores?

FAVREAU:  It’s a very specific VR game that only works for making one movie, but we built all of the assets from it. Gaming and filmmaking is all overlapping, with so much change and disruption. The effort here was to keep the tradition, and not just the tradition of the film and stage production that came before us, but the filmmaking tradition. Oftentimes, when new technology comes online, it disrupts an industry. But with just a little bit of effort, we were able to build around the way filmmakers and film crews work. Caleb Deschanel is fantastic cinematographer who I’ve always wanted to work with, and we were able to invite him to do a very technically advanced film without any prior background in visual effects. It was a whole team of people. We would actually have cameras driven in VR space by a film crew that was in a room with dollies and cranes, assistant directors, script supervisors and set dressers. We kept the same film culture and planted it, using this technology, into the VR realm. And so, although the film was completely animated, as far as performances went, it allowed a live-action film crew to go in and use the tools that they were used to. Part of what’s so beautiful about the lighting, the camera work and the shots of the film, was that we were able to inherit a whole career of experience and artistry from our fantastic team. It’s nice to look at technology as an invitation for things to progress, and not always something that’s going to change the way everything came before it. There’s a balance between innovation and tradition.

How did you blend the actors’ reference videos with the animal-like qualities of the animation?

FAVREAU: There were lots of steps in this process, and that’s why it took so long. It was interesting, over three years, because it was always different, in each phase. In the beginning, it was pencils and voices. And then, casting is the foundation of great cinematic storytelling. I didn’t come from the tradition of visual direction. It’s always been about storytelling and performance. I came up as an actor, so I know that you can’t compromise one iota on cast. You have to get the best people you can because they’re the ones who are gonna do everything. We just built off of our cast. It started with us, just in a room, like a theater rehearsal. It really was what you would do when you grab the book, for the first time, and everybody walks around on the stage and you start to figure your character out. I had them all performing together. We would get them in groups and have everybody mic-ed, so that the sound was usable for the film, and we would have them interacting with one another and improvising. At that point, we shot video on long lenses, just to have reference for what they were doing with their faces, and we would give that to the animators, and the animators would make choices and interpolate it into what a lion would do, or what a hyena would do. If we had just motion-captured their face and put a human expression on the animal’s face, I was concerned that would blow the illusion of it being a naturalistic documentary. We looked at Planet Earth II, and all of those [David Attenborough] BBC documentaries, to see how much emotion can be expressed without human performance, just through music and editorial and the stories that you’re telling. We looked at movies like Babe, which was an inspiration for how we did The Jungle Book, with how much expression and emotion could come out of those characters without having human performance. It really fell on the animator’s hands to try to figure out how to express their preferences through the language of an animal’s emotive language.

The Lion King is in theaters on July 19th.