25 years later, 'The Lion King' roars again (with Beyonce)

LOS ANGELES -- It was just a few months ago that director Jon Favreau was sitting in a scoring session with composer Hans Zimmer for "The Lion King," his ambitious and technology-driven reimagining of the 1994 animated classic, and he and everyone else in the room were getting a little emotional.

It's no wonder: They were recording the music for the stampede (yes, that stampede).

"Working on it doesn't make it any less emotional," Favreau said in an interview earlier this year.

And don't even get him started on what it was like to listen to James Earl Jones record his lines as Mufasa.

"The Lion King" is three years in the making with some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Beyonce, and the expectations couldn't be higher. None of the other major studios have even dared to go up against it in theaters this weekend. Early tracking suggest it could make as much as $150 million in its first weekend in North America, and it's already grossed over $55 million in China.

It helps, of course, that the material is familiar to most of the world already. The animated film, which opened in June 1994 at the peak of the Disney animation renaissance, went on to become a critical hit, the highest grossing film of the year at the worldwide box office (it was second domestically to "Forrest Gump"), a two-time Oscar winner for Zimmer's score and the song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," and a Broadway show -- now the third-longest running and one of the most successful in history. So it was only a matter of time before the Walt Disney Co., in this new era of live-action remakes of its animated library which this year included both "Dumbo" and "Aladdin," turned to one of its most beloved.

Favreau wasn't even finished with his version of "The Jungle Book" when he started inquiring about plans for "The Lion King." He'd learned so much about motion capture technology and had a team he knew how to collaborate with. He was ready to take it to the next level. So, he raised his hand for the big job.

"I kind of lobbied for it," Favreau said.

The studio waited until "The Jungle Book" was out to give him the official word, but the 2016 movie, which scored with both critics and audiences, turned out to be a pretty good audition. And he set to work prepping this live-action "Lion King."