32 Years of The Lion King: 10 Behind-the-Scenes Facts You May Not Know

Disney’s The Lion King is being marked 32 years after its release, and the article revisits 10 production details that were long kept behind the scenes. It explains that the movie was initially treated as Disney’s “B project” while the studio focused on Pocahontas, which executives expected to be the bigger, more prestigious hit. Instead, The Lion King became one of the highest-grossing films in history, while Pocahontas saw far more modest success.

The film’s early title was King of the Jungle, before the team realized lions do not live in jungles and renamed it The Lion King. Its screenplay was an original story, drawing heavy inspiration from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and biblical stories about Moses and Joseph. The roaring sounds were not recorded from lions, but mostly came from tiger roars combined with sound effects by Frank Welker.

One of the film’s most famous sequences, the wildebeest stampede, took nearly three years to make because animators had to develop new software to move hundreds of animals together realistically. Hakuna Matata almost did not make it into the movie either, since Timon and Pumbaa originally had a different song about eating insects; Elton John was initially worried the phrase would sound like a joke, but it became one of Disney’s best-known songs.

The opening was nearly dialogue-heavy, but after the directors heard Hans Zimmer’s music and Lebo M’s performance of Circle of Life, they cut the explanatory monologue entirely and built the famous opening around the score. Can You Feel the Love Tonight was also nearly removed because Jeffrey Katzenberg thought it slowed the pace, but Elton John fought to keep it and it later won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The article also says Disney consulted University of California, Berkeley hyena researchers, one of whom was so angered by the film’s portrayal of hyenas as evil and foolish that he tried to sue Disney for defamation against animals. More than 30 years later, the film remains the most successful hand-drawn, two-dimensional animated movie of all time, standing as a landmark of classic Disney animation.