WORDS AMON WARMANN

BARRY JENKINS JOURNEYED DEEP INSIDE THE DISNEY DREAM FACTORY TO MAKE MUFASA: THE LION KING — SURVIVING TECHNOLOGY, TROLLS AND TRAGEDY ALONG THE WAY...

It was 4 July 2020. The red-letter day (a Saturday) when word first reached Barry Jenkins that the powers-that-be at Disney wanted him to direct a prequel to The Lion King. Having spent the past 112 days working on the epic (and excellent) Apple TV + show The Underground Railroad, Jenkins had been ready for a break, so had decided to head out with partner and fellow filmmaker Lulu Wang on a last-minute road trip. As they cruised up the coast of California, the sea twinkling in the perma-sunshine, his phone pinged to inform him he had been sent the screenplay for Mufasa’s origin story. His immediate response? “Extreme scepticism.”

It was an understandable reaction. Since his feature debut, Medicine For Melancholy, in 2008 —a movie made for the princely sum of $15,000 —Jenkins has carved out a reputation for tender, nuanced filmmaking, exploring themes of identity, sexuality and societal issues. The acclaimed results have included comingof-age classic Moonlight, which memorably won the Best Picture Oscar, and If Beale Street Could Talk, a romantic drama based on the 1974 James Baldwin novel. And now, he was getting sent a script for a photoreal-animated $200 million blockbuster musical about talking animals. Did Mickey Mouse have the right email address?

“A guy like me doesn’t make those films,” Jenkins admits. “I just thought, ‘You know what? I’ve been doing the same thing for eight straight years. Maybe it’ll be cool to do something different.’”

Jenkins might not be a guy who makes “those films” but he is a guy who loves the original 1994 animated movie. The Hamletesque tale of Mufasa, Scar, and Simba left an imprint on him as a teenager while he was babysitting his two younger nephews. “I was done with cartoons at that point,” he recalls. “But every time I put it on, it held their attention. And the more I watched it, the more it held my attention. It opened them up to all these really interesting and deep conversations about life and family, death, regeneration, and legacy.” In a conservative estimate, he reckons he has seen The Lion King about 150 times on a worn-out VHS tape.