![]() ![]() Reviews were positive, and box office was astonishing its $42 million opening weekend more than doubled predictions. So the studio’s unparalleled marketing machine went to work, with a monthslong ballyhoo campaign of breathless behind-the-scenes reports and all-access press events. The picture had a difficult birth, first envisioned, by the original director George Scribner, as a serious-minded, noble nonmusical titled “King of the Jungle.” The success of Disney’s Renaissance films turned it into a light, comic, pop-tinged musical, and the studio was willing to do whatever it took to make the music work without Ashman and Menken. “It’s a combination Moses-Hamlet-King Arthur Meets Elton John in Africa,” the producer Don Hahn told Premiere magazine (“half in jest,” according to the reporter, Ari Posner). And unlike that film, the traumatic death at the center of this story would occur onscreen.Ĭhanciest of all (especially for a studio that has become, in the ensuing years, even more concerned with brand familiarity), this was the first Disney property not based on existing material - though it wasn’t hard to trace its inspirations. This was the first Disney animated feature populated solely by animals even “Bambi” featured a world that humans touched, and occasionally infringed upon. But “The Lion King” would not only change the way Disney did business, but also contribute to a shift in the industry itself. It’s also easy to forget that at the time of its release a quarter-century ago, this was one of the riskiest ventures of Disney’s history, and it was met with some resistance. That opening sequence - so iconic that the teaser trailer for Jon Favreau’s new “Lion King” remake is, in effect, a shot-for-shot recreation - is a kickoff of such brashness and bravado, feverish anticipation and enthusiastic reception, that it’s easy to read as a metaphor for “The Lion King” itself, one of the most profitable and culturally inescapable films of the 1990s. ![]() This movie’s inherent freedom allowed us to play with different subgenres.Few animated films have charged onto the screen with the confidence of Disney’s 1994 smash “The Lion King.” Eschewing opening titles, a giant red sun rising over the Serengeti filled the screen, as the soundtrack blasted the majestic opening song, “The Circle of Life.” The anthem of birth and death gathered intensity as giraffes, elephants and zebras assembled to witness the presentation of the newborn lion, who was held aloft as the music swelled the zebras stomped, the monkeys whooped, and the sun shone down upon the cub. It’s as if you took the girls from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, after kidnapping them, you used them as part of a dark ancestral ritual. In my case, “Edén” is a mix between folk horror and survival film. Rojas spoke about the different short films’ influences: “All of the segments are indebted to their own influences. In addition, I wanted to interpret loneliness as something suffocating, which locks you in a perceptual world where death is not the liberation of this same concept.”įor his part, Lucio A. ![]() Rage is comedy”.Ĭamilo León, for whom this film marks an international debut: “In “Frequency” I wanted to talk about loneliness, an often overlooked concept that can bring illness, fear, physical and psychological damage and even death. And of course a sweet revenge through its protagonist’s pyrokinesis, the power of internal rage. A sarcastic point of view toward irresponsible parenting and children’s minds when that happens. Sandra Arriagada, Chile’s first female director to present a feature at a fantasy film festival, said: “With “On Fire” I wanted to put into practice a subgenre that I have always loved, and that I have seen in many Asian productions, which is social satire in black comedy-slapstick. ![]()
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