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As Disney continues to burn through its catalogue of animated classics, they’ve failed to justify why these new versions need to exist beyond “IP is a low-risk, high-reward way to cash in on nostalgia and brand recognition.” These movies make a lot of business sense, but as far as an artistic justification, there’s not much there for Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and now Jon Favreau’s photoreal adaptation of The Lion King. The template for these movies seems to be to deviate as little as possible from the original narrative right down to dialogue inflection …

The Lion King arrives in less than a month, and we’ve seen surprisingly little of the animals actually talking. We’ve heard dialogue and some songs, but not much of the animals emoting with their faces as opposed to their body language. Director Jon Favreau showed he could get impressive performances out of CGI animals with The Jungle Book, but The Lion King is an even heavier lift. Speaking to Fandango, Favreau explained the challenges of making sure you get the right performance from a CGI animal: We learned a lot on The Jungle Book, and one of the …