Jon Favreau is busy putting together the voice cast for his live-action take on The Lion King, and he’s just found the men he want to be Simba’s warthog and meerkat pals, Timon and Pumbaa. TheWrap reports that Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen will take on the roles.
They join Donald Glover as Simba, with James Earl Jones returning to play his father, Mufasa. It rumoured that the makers want Beyonce to play Simba’s mother Nala, but that’s yet to be confirmed.
In the 1994 animated movie, Timon and Pumbaa were voiced by Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella. Although Billy Of The Street’s Eichner and Bad Neighbours’ Rogen seem somewhat different to those two on the surface, they do have a similar energy and could be a lot of fun in the roles.
What’s not known yet is whether the movie will follow Beauty and the Beast’s reinvention of the animated movie as a full-on musical, or whether it will remove most (if not all) of the tunes, like Favreau’s Jungle Book.You have to hope that at the very least, we get to hear Eichner and Rogen’s take on Hakuna Matata.
It’s expected that the movie will shoot this year, although no release date is currently set.
Disney is being remaking just about every animated movie it’s ever made as a live action project. So far it’s been far more successful than anyone expected, as even some that seemed like bad ideas, such as The Jungle Book, turned into a huge hit. The Lion King however is another proposition again, as it doesn’t have any humans in it at all, but with the stage version being a colossal success, it shows it certainly has potential in the live-action arena.
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