the lion king press conference
A Mighty ROAR
The Global Press Conference for The Lion King was held in Beverly Hills at the Montage Hotel on July 10th, 2019. I, along with other members of the media were lucky enough to attend the press conference. One of my best friends volunteered to hold down my crazy house fort where my psychotic pack of wild monkeys were about to revolt and smear feces on the walls so that I may whisk myself away to a fabulously magical day in Beverly Hills. It was an amazing experience that I am ever so grateful for (but I could do without that crazy LA traffic!).
The air in the conference room was all abuzz with excitement. Unlike other press conferences that I have attended in the past, media guests found their seats quickly and stayed in their seats until the conference began. Talking excitedly to each other (shoot, I was doing a lot of talking myself!) that made the room sizzle. It was exciting!
Participating Talent
Jon Favreau / Director
Donald Glover “Simba”
Chiwetel Ejiofor “Scar”
Alfre Woodard “Sarabi”
Seth Rogen “Pumbaa”
Billy Eichner “Timon”
JD McCrary “Young Simba”
Shahadi Wright Joseph “Young Nala”
Dr. John Kani “Rafiki”
Keegan-Michael Key “Kamari”
Florence Kasumba “Shenzi”
Eric Andre “Azizi”
Hans Zimmer / Composer
Lebo M / Performer, African music & choir arranger, writer, producer
Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba Sithi uhm ingonyama
What is that you ask? That’s the opening line to “Circle of Life”! It can be translated as “Here comes a lion, Father” “Oh yes, it is a lion”.
The Lion King Press Conference began with an epic ROAR to the tune of Circle of Life lead by none other than Lebo M and Miss Clydene Jackson. It was truly a spectacular experience that could feel in my bones!
Technology Gone Wild
Everyone’s favorite funny man, turned chef, turned director, the one and only Mr. Jon Favreau had the world of technology at his fingertips for the creation of The Lion King. Since he was creating The Jungle Book and The Lion King back to back (and sometimes at the very same time), the advanced technology used to create The Lion King was ready to be used and abused by the end of The Jungle Book.
Mr. Favreau wanted to point out that although everyone will take away the advanced technology aspect of this film, that this film still is truly handmade. As he said himself: “There is animators working on every shot, every environment that you see in the film other than actually, there’s one shot that’s a real photographic shot but everything else is built from scratch by artists. And we had a great team assembled. And then the idea of using what we learned on that and the new technologies that were available to make a story like Lion King with its great music, great characters, and great story, it seemed like a wonderful, logical conclusion. And so that was something we set out to do.”
Donald Glover “Simba”
Can You Feel The Love Tonight?
When Donald Glover was asked if he had prepped his son to watch The Lion King and told him that daddy was Simba. Donald said that he didn’t tell him anything about it, he wanted to wait to see his reaction. But somehow he had heard about the film and said “Oh the one with Beyonce in it?”And then during the movie, he’s like oh, dad’s in it, too. This is great. Bonus. You know.
Hahahahahahahahah Donald Glover was upstaged by Beyonce to his own kid. Can you feel the love? 🙂
I hope I was able to give you a tiny insight of the creation of The Lion King. The Lion King will be in theaters nationwide THIS Friday July 19, 2019!
*All photos copyright Desiree Eaglin
