“What danger? Ah, me, I like the danger. I laugh at the danger!” This sentence, which has rocked the childhood of many “millennials”, is now the delight of young and old in the cinema. Released on July 17 on the screens in france, the new adaptation of “the Lion King” Walt Disney Studio, designed image-based synthesis, technology, video game and virtual reality, is off to a start roaring.
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According to Allociné, the movie was at the top of the first screenings in paris and is the fourth-best start to the year 2019, with 630.478 spectators during its first day, behind “the Avengers Endgame”, “Spider-Man Far From Home” and “Toy Story 4” – all three of the productions of The Walt Disney Company – asserting the domination of Disney on the film production. Globally, the film has already generated more than € 89 million.
The challenge of adapting
The challenge was big as Disney is an attack on a monument. The initial version of the “Lion King”, released in 1994, was acclaimed by critics and audiences, winning two academy awards, and generating more than $ 400 million at the box office.
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Since then, the musical self-titled has made more than 9000 performances only at Broadway, in New York, not counting its appearances in France and the United Kingdom. The point that Jon Favreau, the film’s director, already noted for its reinvention successful “the Jungle Book”, in 2016, had observed in his production notes: “I felt the immense responsibility not to fuck up”.
A strategy since 2010
In fact, the result illustrates clearly the specifications of Disney in the context of its production strategy: to adapt his great cartoons in the cinema. If the house had tried to film adaptation in the 1990s with “101 Dalmatians” and a first “the Jungle Book”, this approach has become almost routine, from 2010, with the film adaptation of the cartoon “Alice in wonderland”, itself an adaptation of the famous tale of Lewis Carroll.
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there are the key ingredients of the recipe for success: a cast of stars, the special effects of the highest caliber, and a plot that complies to the letter with that of the cartoon. “The Lion King” is no exception to the rule, with Beyoncé, Seth Rogen, or even John Oliver in heads up displays, an image hypersophistiquée inspired by the aesthetics of the documentary and a scenario without surprise. The bet? Seduce a public of children as adults nostalgic tales of their younger years.
recipe
“the jungle Book” (2016), “beauty and the Beast” (2017), “Aladdin” and “Dumbo” (both in 2019) are fruits fruitful for this approach. “Evil”, in 2014, is also produced, although the plot develops a counterpoint to the more black “La Belle au bois dormant”. And these movies are a hit. All productions, except “Dumbo”, has brought in more than € 445 million, nearly one billion to two of them.
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“Evil 2” is planned for mid-October and the adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” is on the table. “Mulan”, announced for 2020, has seen its trailer exceed 24 million views in the first week of its release on YouTube. Any door to believe that “The Lion King” will see a fate as successful as its predecessors. The Los Angeles Times provides more than 155 million euros in revenue in the United States and Canada four days after its release.
A doubt, tarnishes, however, these hopes at a global scale. The overall balance of the film will depend in part on its hearings in China. However, after a first week of triumphant, Simba is already dethroned by “Looking up”, a family comedy local. The Middle kingdom is not the Land of the Lions.
