Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba! Like a baboon mystic holding up a lion cub in front of all the animals of the African savanna, Disney has announced the birth of its next remake, Jon Favreau’s upcoming CGI Lion King. In the latest trailer for the movie, we see a bunch of new footage, which very much resembles the original movie, probably because it has been meticulously re-created. Timon and Pumbaa also make their grand, somewhat unsettling entrance into the trailer humming happily right at the end.
This isn’t a Maleficent-style reimagining, but a film rendered with the same kind of photo-realistic CGI as in Favreau’s Jungle Book. Donald Glover will voice Simba, while Beyoncé herself will play Nala, which means that, if nothing else, next summer will bring us the Bey–Childish Gambino duet of our dreams. We’re far from the Sahel now!
The Lion King opens July 19, 2019.