We covered 50 lions at first. I mean, that’s how it works. You start by covering many, many storylines. What people will see is one tiny fraction of what we actually filmed. A lion’s life is for the most part uneventful. When it is eventful, it’s very, very compelling—but there is a lot of sleeping and resting and walking. It’s almost like reality television, where you’re following a lot of different storylines, and then in retrospect, we get to curate that. We looked at all four years of footage and then figured out the story that emerged, but Kio was compelling from the beginning because he’s just so adorable and had an uncanny resemblance to the way we depicted our lead lion in the CG Lion King. Also, to be honest with you, it’s easy to identify and empathize with a younger animal because, visually, they just make you just want to stare at them.
You do catch that lions sleep a lot, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a nature documentary where they show how many flies are just sitting on their face.
Yeah, it’s tricky. We could have easily decided to bring it into one of the inexpensive CG tools and clean it up, but we made the decision that in this moment in time, making that commitment to showing things authentically feels like it might be appreciated.
Of course, the score feels like a touch of Hollywood.
Part of my job is always understanding the journey the audience is going on as I film something, write something, edit something, or score something. Showing it to [composer] Hans Zimmer, who has even more experience—he’s someone who’s been involved not just with filmmaking but specifically The Lion King story, from the original animated film through the theatrical production and collaborating with us on on our film. I showed it to him, and he felt it immediately. So he was involved for many years, watching the footage and seeing where it led. And you know, it’s like following a sports team: You don’t know what’s going to happen, you’re rooting for things to happen, but you have no control.