The Kenya and Africa influence on ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’

A great grey rock, dubbed Pride Rock, hunches over the 32,000-acre conservation like a gigantic frog about to leap onto the savannah below. In the far distance rises the massive shoulders of the second highest peak in Africa, Mount Kenya.

It is this rock that the famous battle scene in the popular Hollywood animated movie and the biggest Walt Disney franchise The Lion King is fought in the latest prequel Mufasa: The Lion King to be released on December 20.

It was for this pride rock that Simba the lion cub fought his battles. From this rock, his father King Mufasa ruled the savannah plateau that stretched to Maasai Mara dubbed the Pride Lands in the film, until his wicked brother, Scar, murdered him.

This rock has formed a significant element of Walt Disney production, The Lion King sequels, and spinoff, which has grossed millions of dollars worldwide.

It was in 1991 when the Walt Disney team first visited the Hell’s Gate National Park, Kenya’s dramatic geothermal park in Naivasha, that they drew inspiration for their characters' names: the pride lions of Mufasa, Simba, Scar, Kiros, Nala, Kiara, Kovu, Pumba the Warthog, Rafiki the Monkey, and others.

But it was here at Borana Conservancy that they finally found the epic stage upon which the great drama loosely modelled on Shakespeare's play Hamlet would be enacted. It was an epic choice, as The Lion King was to become the most successful traditionally animated film of all time.

First released in 1994, The Lion King won two Oscars and Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture. The second sequel, King II: Simba’s Pride, was released in 1998.

A photorealistic animated remake of the film was released in 2019, marking the 25th anniversary of the release of the original film.

The remake became an instant box office hit, generating $360 million in ticket sales in two weeks upon its release on July 18, 2019.

For this classic remake, the job fell on director Jon Favreau, who used cutting-edge computer-generated imagery (CGI) technology to bring the characters to life.

Pride Lands – Maasai Mara

The job of recreating the film’s Pride Lands, African wilderness, fell largely to production designer James Chinlund, known for his works on Avengers and Planet of the Apes.

Before meeting Disney executives, Favreau visited Kenya after getting the green light on the project. Thirteen key members of the Favreau production team, Chinlund included, also made the two-week trip to Kenya.

The team brought along a tonne of camera equipment and shot more than 12 terabytes of images from Borana Conservancy, Hell’s Gate, Losai National Reserve, Chyulu Hills to Maasai Mara.

Cloud Forest – Mount Kenya

Mount Kenya served as inspiration for the Cloud Forest in the movie. The sand dunes of the Namib Desert as well as the area around Lake Turkana, the world's largest permanent desert lake, inspired the parched arid land.

You get to see Simba crossing between the Pride Lands and the Cloud Forest. The dry lakebeds around Mount Kilimanjaro were used to create the look of the area, where Simba collapses after his desert crossing. The Waterfall took inspiration from Karuru Waterfall the tallest cascade in Kenya, found in Aberdare National Park.

Director Barry Jenkins speaks

For Mufasa: The Lion King, this time the job fell into the hands of director Barry Jenkins. At first, the Hollywood filmmaker known for his work on Moonlight, who spoke to The EastAfrican, wanted to turn down the project whose production budget was $250 million.

Disney sent the scripts to his agent, but Jenkins at first appeared uninterested. It was only after the insistence of his girlfriend and fellow filmmaker Lulu Wang that he had a look at the script and ended up falling in love with it.

With Favreau and Chinlund having already set a new template with the remaking of the 1994 classic, Jenkins says what he set to achieve with the latest project was to add complexity to the story-telling.

“I’m not from the continent of Africa directly, but I somehow feel connected to it. This story originated in 1994 in Africa. The names (of the characters) and the settings were rooted in that time. I love that we got to go into this film and maybe bring a little of complexity and add a little bit of nuance to it,” Jenkins said.

“The original Lion King was sought of set out in southern Kenya, maybe somewhere along the border (of Tanzania). But, in this story, Mufasa gets washed away and we mapped out where we thought he might get washed up to.

"And then he tries to make this journey back home to Kenya and he is journeying all through these different regions with all these different cultures. And, as he goes through all these landscapes, he picks up all these friends and their cultures throughout the journey, which I think is a beautiful way of storytelling.

"That was important for me because, if the story was going to be this massive movie that travels all across the globe, then how much of the African continent and its differentiated African experience could you capture in a movie like this?”

Jenkins believes what he injected to this prequel was freshness and different storytelling.

“There is only so much complexity of the African continent that a movie like this can relate to. I loved working with several characters who were born in Africa, as they helped to break down the very Western way of approaching dialogue in this movie. I told them if they felt like they wanted to put it into their native language, please do, and then we will figure out the translation later"

"So, when (South African) Kagiso Lediga, who plays the young Rafiki, enters the film in minute 43, you start to hear the language of the film shift, and there are things he is saying that are taking the dynamics between the characters and placing them out of the context of me and my Hollywood screenwriters into the context of how actually people speak to one another in an African setup. So, the dialogue has all these different shades and complexity, as it’s no longer being pushed through this filter of the Hollywood screenwriter and myself, and the limitations of our experience of the continent,” he said.

Blending all these complexities wasn’t a simple task, the director says.

“During the making of the film, there was a line in the movie that Kagiso said in Zulu language and he and Lebo (Morake) got into an argument over what was its proper translation in English, just to make sure it was the proper communication that Kagiso was making. And so, it was beautiful to see them have this dialogue, I had to just be a witness to it, because it’s their language. And these are the complexities that I bring in this story,”

Lebo Morake is a South African actor and composer famous for arranging and performing the Lion King soundtracks.

In this latest Lion King movie, 32 Grammy Award winner Beyonce will again reprise her role as Queen Nala, with her daughter Blue Ivy Carter joining the cast as Kiara, the daughter of Nala and King Simba, voiced by Donald Glover.

Aaron Pierre will play Mufasa, Kelvin Harrison Jr is Taka, Tiffany Boone is Sarabi, Kagiso Lediga is Rafiki, Preston Nymon is Zazu, Mads Mikkelsen is Kiros.

Thandiwe Newton is Taka’s mother, Eshe. Lennie James portrays Taka’s father Obasi, Ankia Noni Rose as Mufasa’s father Masego, Seth Rogen as Pumbaa, and Bill Eichner as Timon.