I’m a sucker for a good nature documentary, but National Geographic’s new series Lion – which premiered this week – is something I’ve genuinely never seen before.
Directed by Jon Favreau – who also helmed Disney’s 2019 CG remake of The Lion King, along with Iron Man and The Mandalorian and Grogu – the new series follows the journey of a single lion cub over four years, with over a thousand filming days spent on Kenya’s Masai Mara savannah.
During this time, the small cub – nicknamed Kio – goes from fighting for survival to becoming leader of the pack, all of which is captured in incredible close-up detail using a full suite of traditional cameras and camera drones.
Favreau was a newbie to documentary filmmaking before embarking on the series, but he teamed up with Mike Gunton – a veteran BBC producer.
ABOVE: Watch the trailer for Lion
Gunton has worked on many of the BBC nature documentaries narrated by the legendary David Attenborough, such as Dynasties and Planet Earth – the ones that all of us have watched too many times to count (or is that just me?).
It was Gunton’s suggestion that Favreau and the team venture into the Masai Mara with drones, something that hadn’t really been done before. To achieve this, the team made use of local talent in Kenya, enlisting aerial cinematographer Anthony Njuguna to get shots with a DJI Inspire.
Favreau has discussed how the story of the series was discovered in the process of shooting and editing. The crew started by covering 50 lions with no idea of what the ultimate story was going to be, but found themselves increasingly drawn to Kio the cub as he battled the odds to survive on the unforgiving savannah.
Despite (or perhaps partly because of) having previously worked on a fully CG film, Favreau was drawn to the project in part by the prospect of creating something that was fully, 100% real.
"As we entered into this project, generative AI came online, and there’s a tremendous influx of content that you don’t know whether it’s authentic or not," he told National Geographic magazine.
"The notion of going out into the field and limiting ourselves to completely analog tools and telling an authentic story that feels real, I find that engaging right now, in contrast to how much out there is fabricated."
And just when I thought I couldn’t be any more excited, the score for the series is composed by the great Hans Zimmer – who also composed the music for Disney’s original The Lion King movie back in 1994 (as well as the likes Denis Villeneuve's Dune trilogy and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy).
Lion is available to watch now on Disney Plus and Hulu.
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