the lion king

The animated classic gets a CGI makeover in the upcoming Disney film. Watch the trailer now!

As usual, Disney waited until late afternoon to make a major announcement, but it’s always nice to end the day with some awesome news. Today, it’s the full voice cast ensemble for The Lion King, Jon Favreau’s live-action (-ish) reimagining of the studio’s animated classic — and perhaps the most exciting project on their upcoming (and growing) slate of live-action remakes.

Watching an actor record a role in a sound booth for an animated film usually feels a little off, and that’s especially true when those actors are reading lines you memorized as a kid from a movie beloved worldwide like few others. But watching Jeremy Irons read and sing Scar’s most dastardly evil parts from ‘The Lion King’ is just plain delicious fun.

Over nearly 80 years, the 56 feature films from Walt Disney Animation Studios have become beloved and instantly recognizable their iconic fairy tales, memorable comic-relief sidekicks, terrifying villains, and some of the greatest songs in cinema history. This week heralds the release of Disney’s latest animated film, Moana, which boasts songs co-written by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. So there’s no better time to compile a list of the 25 best songs in animated Disney history — with a couple of important pre-list caveats. First, to avoid overloading the list with songs from only a few films, each movie here could only be represented by a maximum of two songs. Second, this list has films in the official Disney animation canon only, so nothing from Pixar or even The Nightmare Before Christmas. With that in mind, here’s the list!

With the news that Jon Favreau was directing a live-action remake of arguably THE most popular Disney movie of all time, The Lion King, people were undoubtedly excited. Favreau successfully launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man, believed by many to still be the best Avengers movie, and has had a few notable successes since, including Chef in 2014 and this summer’s almost-entirely-CGI remake of The Jungle Book. The latter did so well that Disney hired Favreau again to direct The Lion King, and today it was announced that the film has found a screenwriter.

Well this is certainly an interesting tweet, from director Jon Favreau:

Cooper and I were talking about this last week, as Spring Break busts out in full swing, and this particular hotel knows how to have a little fun with all these sleepy college kids.

This week, Disney announced plans to re-release its Oscar-winning animated feature, 'The Lion King,' in 3-D this fall. According to reports, the 3-D version will hit theaters on September 16, 2011, about 17 years after its original theatrical release, in 1994.