Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I really don't have a good fix on what Jon Favreau's The Lion King, his Jungle Book followup for Disney, is going to be. They keep calling it "live action" but unlike Jungle Book there's no human character at the center of this story.
My guess is by "live action" they mean photoreal animation, which hopefully means Favreau has the geniuses at Weta Digital in his corner again this time out. They've got photoreal, expressive animals down pat at this point.
What we do know is that Favreau is assembling a quality cast, which incluces Donald Glover as Simba, Seth Rogen as Pumbaa, Billy Eichner as Timon and James Earl Jones returning to voice Mufasa.
The Wrap reports that they'll be joined by John Oliver, who will voice Zazu, the uptight bird caretaker/advisor of young Simba.
In the original Disney animated movie Rowan Atkinson voiced this character, so it seems that Favreau is keeping the British feel by casting Oliver, who has been spending his time as the highly entertaining voice of reason on his HBO show LAST WEEK TONIGHT.
Favreau's big Lion King redo is scheduled to hit screens in 2019.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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