The debate over whether The Lion King is live-action or animated has been going on for months.
While some parties make the argument that The Lion King can be called an animated film; since every single frame of the film is comprised of computer generated footage (except for one shot, according to director Jon Favreau). Another party points out that the film uses photo-realistic techniques that are far more advanced than traditional animation.
Director and Writer of the film, Jon Favreau in an interview with Slash Film revealed that our confusion is not unfounded when he stated that his film is ‘neither’ animation nor live-action.
“Well, it’s difficult because it’s neither, really. It depends what standard you’re using”, Favreau said.
“Because there’s no real animals and there’s no real cameras and there’s not even any performance that’s being captured that’s underlying data that’s real”, he added.
He also said that calling The Lion King an animated movie is “misleading as far as what the expectations might be”.
Even as The Lion King passes Frozen as the highest grossing animated movie, Disney still isn’t calling it an animated movie.
What’s interesting to note though is that although the film is largely being referred to as a live-action remake. In reality, it’s all CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) animation, meaning it’s not live-action at all. It just looks that way because the same groundbreaking technology used for the recent remake of The Jungle Book is being employed to bring these characters to life for a new generation.
Animated or not, The Lion King has roared its way to become the second highest grossing film of 2019 at both the domestic and global box office. That is enough to get every living being animated
