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Anyone who grew up in the 90s will agree that one particular film scene caused us irreparable childhood trauma.<\/p>\n
I am, of course, talking about the moment in The Lion King when Mufasa dies at the hands of his evil brother Scar, after leaping into danger to save his young son Simba from a stampede. Just thinking about Simba begging his dad to wake up brings a tear to my eye.<\/p>\n
As I tuned in to watch National Geographic\u2019s groundbreaking new series Lion, which follows a cub called Kio from eight weeks old until he\u2019s an adult strong enough to claim the throne, I expected to suffer similar heartache.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The arc of it in the end is hopeful and is a triumph. That is the lesson of life that you want people to have,\u2019 executive producer Mark Gunton, a longtime collaborator of Sir David Attenborough, assured me when he spoke to Metro.<\/p>\n
The more I learnt about Lion, the more I was left in awe. The crew followed Kio in Kenya\u2019s Maasai Mara for four years, from the early stages of his life \u2013 when he was first introduced to his pride by his mother \u2013 into adulthood. I had no idea that only around one in eight male lion cubs survive to adulthood, while various statistics claim that between 20 to 50% of cubs make it past the age of two.<\/p>\n
This made the fact that the film crew were able to track Kio for four years even more remarkable. When people found out about their ambitious project, they had their doubts, Mark admitted. But he, fellow executive producer Jon, composer Hans Zimmer and their many colleagues were determined to make their dream a reality.<\/p>\n
\u2018To my knowledge, nobody\u2019s ever been able to tell the story of a single male cub from the moment it effectively emerged out of the den to becoming a powerful king amongst kings, so that opportunity has been amazing,\u2019 Mark shared.<\/p>\n
The idea for Lion came from a few different sources. Of the many programmes he\u2019s created\u00a0over the years with Sir David, Mark had recently worked on Dynasties, a phenomenal BBC series that follows different groups of animals, including a pride of lions in the Maasai Mara.<\/p>\n
Jon directed the 2019 live-action remake of The Lion King, while maestro Hans composed the score of the film and the original 1994 animated release. So for all three of them, this new endeavour was a major passion project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Jon, Hans and I, our job was to drive the vision of it. It was rather nice that Jo, Hans and I have worked together now, either together, all three of us, or individually, on a number of projects,\u2019 Mark, a senior executive at the BBC Natural History Unit, said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hans did the music for The Planet Earth projects I worked on. Jon and I worked on the series Prehistoric Planet for Apple. Our paths crossed on many occasions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018This one seemed the one where absolutely it\u2019s a no-brainer to come together, because of Jon and Hans having worked on the remake Lion King, Hans on the original Lion King. There\u2019s a lot of emotional investment in this from all of us in different ways, and you don\u2019t get these opportunities very often.\u2019<\/p>\n
Mark hopes that Lion will appeal to audiences of all ages, from six-year-olds to 90-year-olds, and I suspect it will. The ambitious series provides an illuminating insight into what life in a pride, and away from one, is really like for a lion, and demonstrates that these powerful creatures are far more than \u2018jaws and claws\u2019.<\/p>\n
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