Part of the circle of life is seeing your favorite childhood movies remade as an adult. Disney has been hard at work on live-action adaptations of its animated classics in recent years, and The Lion King is one of the most anticipated on the studio’s list. That is especially true after big casting news was unveiled on Wednesday, November 1: None other than Beyonce Knowles-Carter was revealed to be one of the film’s stars.
The Grammy winner will voice Nala, Simba’s best friend and eventual queen. As previously announced, Simba, the titular lion king, is set to be portrayed by Donald Glover. Like Beyonce, Glover doubles as a musician; he has put out multiple rap albums under the stage name Childish Gambino.
Because the story told in The Lion King spans numerous years, Beyonce and Glover won’t be the only actors to play Nala and Simba. The lions’ younger selves will be played by J.D. McCrary and Shahadi Wright Joseph, respectively. Hard as it is for us older fans to believe, the two actors weren’t even born when the original animated film came out.
The rest of The Lion King‘s cast is impressive as well. James Earl Jones will once again voice Simba’s father, Mufasa, as he did in the animated film, while Alfre Woodard will portray the young lion’s mom. Simba’s malevolent uncle Scar will be voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen are on board as Timon and Pumbaa, respectively. The cast also includes comedians John Oliver and Keegan-Michael Key, among others.
#TheLionKing. 2019. 🦁👑 pic.twitter.com/UMJo18FwDt
— Disney (@Disney) November 1, 2017
All in all, the final list is great. The casting of Beyonce, in particular, should get fans excited. As one of the best-selling artists of all time, she is bound to make excellent contributions to the movie’s soundtrack. She is also likely to be a big box office draw given the enthusiasm of her die-hard fans, the Beyhive.
The Lion King is an adaptation of the 1994 movie that remains one of the highest-grossing animated films ever. Its voice cast included Jones, Matthew Broderick, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Moira Kelly, Niketa Calame, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, and more.
In honor of the film’s 25th anniversary, The Lion King will open in summer 2019.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?