‘The Lion King’ Sequel to Feature Multiple New Characters

Casting is underway for Disney’s follow-up to their highest-grossing live-action/CGI remake of The Lion King, released in 2019. Now, thanks to an industry insider we have some new information on the film.

Thanks to Daniel Richtman, he has revealed a new production grid that features two familiar characters and several new characters.

The studio is currently casting for actors to play the roles of young Scar and Mufasa. For both of these characters, the studio is looking for young actors to play the characters between the ages of 8 and 13. The younger versions of these classic characters will lead the film that is said to be a sequel that will also explore the origin of Mufasa, which this casting breakdown only confirms.

Disney is also looking to cast actors for brand new characters not shown in the previous incarnations of the various Lion King films. The characters are as follows, Adah, Horatio, Elijah, Celia, Kaliban, Cardi (no, not B.), and Zola. The grid states they are looking for a mix of American and British accents for the role, but provide no additional information on the characters.

Read: ‘Disenchanted’ Sets Being Built in Irish Village, Plus Open Call for Extras

Academy Award- winning director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) will be in the director’s seat for this film. He will be teaming up once again with his cinematographer James Laxton. Jenkins talked about the project a couple months back.

I read the script and about 40 pages in I turned to Lulu [Wang] and I said, “Holy shit, this is good.” And as I kept reading, I got further away from the side of my brain that said, “Oh, a filmmaker like you doesn’t make a film like this,” and allowed myself to get to the place where these characters, this story, is amazing. What really pushed me across the line was James, my DP, said, “You know what? There’s something really interesting in this mode of filmmaking that we haven’t done and that not many people have done.” That was when I went back to the powers that be and said, “I would love to do this, but I’ve got to be able to do what I do.” And they said yes! I think part of that is because I knew at that point that you had already shot a very big movie of your own with some of these same folks. And knowing that Chloe Zhao had gone from one of the most beautiful films of the century with “The Rider” to making a Marvel movie, I was like, “Oh, shit. If she can do it, I can do it.”

The film will be produced by Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. Production will begin in Los Angeles on September 6. Though no release date has been officially announced, it is likely that this will be a theatrical release, rather than one going straight to Disney+.

There is no official title as of yet- however, the working title is confirmed to be Wonderwall.

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