“Life’s not fair, is it my little friend? While some are born to feast, others spend their lives in the dark, begging for scraps,” says Scar, voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor (also known as my Everlasting Gobstopper—but I digress). It’s the opening of The Lion King’s highly anticipated official trailer, which dropped Wednesday morning, exactly 100 days ahead of the film’s opening on July 19. (Anyone else smell the next summer blockbuster?)
Yes, it’s the “Circle of Life,” but it’s also the Discovery Channel-worthy version of one of our favorite childhood traumas films, brought to life for a new generation by the magic of CGI and the voices of Donald Glover, James Earl Jones, Alfre Woodard, Florence Kasumba, Keenan-Michael Key, Eric André and some unknown ingenue named Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, among others.
Are we ready? I mean, can I sneak an entire box of Kleenex into the theater along with my requisite snacks? I hope so because personally, I already feel attacked attached. This Macbethian tale was a hallmark of my youth, and likely yours, too (alright, I was 19 when it came out, but still traumatized), and the reimagining is, from the looks of it, epic.
Who’s not in the first official trailer? Beyoncé! (Okay, maybe we glimpse her character Nala from the back, but it’s not exactly the same as watching her shimmy away, is it?) Thankfully, we have the internet to envision these scenes for us ahead of the film’s release, complete with a CGI rendering of how it would likely go down ...
Okay, so maybe it won’t go down exactly like that, but we’ll be in the theater on July 19 to see how this blackety-black, hyper-realistic tragedy allegory plays in front of theater audiences. I mean, what could possibly go wrong when Disney has licensed “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”?