Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre Join Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ Prequel

As production begins on Disney’s sequel to the 2019 billion dollar hit The Lion King, the film has found its leads. According to Deadline, Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves) and Aaron Pierre (Old) have signed on to voice the two leads.

Kelvin Harrison Jr. will take on the role of Mufasa, taking over the role from James Earl Jones. Aaron Pierre will be voicing Taka, the real name for Scar before he became the villain we know him to be. Additional casting is currently underway, so we can expect to hear some big-name stars joining in the coming weeks. New characters and some familiar characters will appear.

Read: ‘Tron 3’ Adds ‘Dune’ Production Designer Patrice Vermette

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 of 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.”

Jenkins

The untitled prequel (which Disney describes as live-action) will continue with the photorealistic animation technology that director Jon Favreau used in the blockbuster 2019 update of the beloved franchise. Jeff Nathanson, who scripted the last instalment, is back in the fold. The film will be produced by Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. 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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