Disney’s putting a “reimagining” of The Lion King in the hands of Jon Favreau, following his version of The Jungle Book raking in piles and piles of money. This trend of Disney remaking its own hits forever and ever is great. A live-action Frozen movie has to be coming soon, right?
The details on the “reimagining” are very thin; the only concrete thing Disney’s announcement says for sure is that, “Like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King will include songs from the animated film.”
Unlike Beauty and the Beast, however—or even The Jungle Book—the Lion King doesn’t include a single human character, so this can’t actually be a live-action movie. I’d bet, based on them giving this to Favreau, that it’s probably going to be a realistic CGI thing like The Jungle Book was, only without the bother of having a Mowgli to animate around.
There’s no release date for this or for The Jungle Book sequel Favreau is also working on with Disney. Just throw it on the pile of all the other remakes Disney is doing.