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Total Film
Total Film
Entertainment
Matt Maytum

Mufasa: The Lion King director and cast reveal how the Disney prequel will defy expectations: "As someone who was very familiar with The Lion King, I was shocked at how many things I assumed I knew"

Mufasa Barry Jenkins Disney Aaron Pierre James Earl Jones Kelvin Harrison, Jr. Scar Tiffany Boone Taka Chiwetel Ejiofor
(L-R) Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre), Taka (voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and Sarabi (voiced by Tiffany Boone) in Disney’s live-action Mufasa: The Lion King.

If you thought that Barry Jenkins – the Oscar-winning writer/director behind such soulful adult dramas such as Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Amazon Prime Video’s The Underground Railroad – was an unusual choice to helm a prequel to 2019's photorealistic remake of The Lion King, you're not the only one.

Jenkins himself felt the same. "I definitely thought that when it first came my way," he tells GamesRadar+ and Total Film. “I got a call from my agent saying, 'Disney has sent over this project – a prequel for The Lion King.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's not going to happen.' But without even reading the thing!"

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