The Lion King, one of the highest-grossing films of all time, was released on this day in June in New York and Los Angeles (it would open in wide release on June 24). Today, almost everyone in the world knows the story of the young lion cub Simba, who tries to find his place in the circle of life and follow the long, honorable shadow cast by his father, King Mufasa, after he is killed by Scar (voiced with oozy relish by Jeremy Irons). But, during pre-production, when the project was called King of the Jungle, the production teams wasn’t so sure they had a hit on their hands. “In the early stages, there was great skepticism that a modern audience would embrace a movie that didn’t include any human characters, much less one built around singing animals,” Michael Eisner, then chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, remembered in his book Work in Progress. “But through countless drafts over five years, The Lion King evolved into one of those magical films in which everything comes together… It was also a daunting standard to match.” Eisner also noted that it was “probably the most profitable film ever made, including Titanic (lions and meerkats don’t demand a percentage of the gross).”
