Jon Favreau Makes Lion King Cast Announcements

Donald Glover and James Earl Jones Join Favreau’s Lion King Cast!

February 17, 2017

Director Jon Favreau took to Twitter on Friday evening to announce two members of The Lion King cast. It’s the latest in a line of live-action versions of Disney animated classics which include the upcoming Beauty and the Beast and Favreau’s recent The Jungle Book. The Lion King cast includes Donald Glover (Community, Atlanta) as the young lion Simba and James Earl Jones (Star Wars) as Mufasa. Jones, of course, did the voice of Mufasa in the 1994 animated film. Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) was the voice of the adult Simba, with Joseph Williams (the band Toto) doing the singing. Check out the tweet announcements for The Lion King cast below.

Looking forward to working with this legend. #Mufasa pic.twitter.com/1LszbWrcYT

— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) February 18, 2017

I just can’t wait to be king. #Simba pic.twitter.com/wUYKixMBJI

— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) February 18, 2017

ComingSoon.net recently spoke to Favreau about his work on The Jungle Book, during which he told us that he was planning to use VR technology on The Lion King. He told us, “I’d gone over at lunch just to see what the new VR technology was, and by the end of it, we were starting to try to figure out how to use VR in shot design. It’s kind of like if you have a person wearing the HMD, wearing the visor, [if it’s] is the audience member, you write code one way, but if that person is the camera, you’re using the same tools, but you’re kind of changing the work flow so that you’re using it to build the footage, as opposed to using the VR to observe the footage or experience the content.” He explained that there is so much innovation going in for video games since they’re made for consumers. He said that not as much is being done in terms of behind-the-scenes technology for film.

What do you think of The Lion King cast so far? Who would you like to see play Nala, Timon or Pumbaa? What about Scar? Do you want them to get Jeremy Irons (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) to do the voice? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or tweet us @comingsoonnet!