\tDisney\u2019s \u201cMufasa\u201d is one of the last remaining Hollywood tentpoles of the year, and it might be director Barry Jenkins\u2018 first and last time making an all-digital movie. Jenkins is the Oscar winner behind acclaimed dramas such as \u201cMoonlight\u201d and \u201cIf Beale Street Could Talk,\u201d and he said in an interview with Vulture that he knows what everyone is thinking: \u201cOn what planet do I, Mr.\u00a0\u2018Moonlight,\u2019 make a prequel to\u00a0\u2018The Lion King?’\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI can\u2019t tweet about the Super Bowl without somebody reminding me that I\u2019m making this fucking film,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u00a0can\u2019t \u2026 When I took this job, the idea was \u2018What does Barry Jenkins know about visual effects? Why the hell would he do this movie?\u2019 I think part of that I found very invigorating. People make these things, you know, with computers. So anybody should be able to do this. Anybody, right? There\u2019s nothing physically that says I am incapable of doing this.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\tVulture has an extensive breakdown of the three years Jenkins spent making \u201cMufasa\u201d using all-virtual production tools, just as director Jon Favreau did before him on 2019\u2019s \u201cThe Lion King.\u201d The new film serves as a prequel to that story. Jenkins spent 147 days shooting \u201cMufasa,\u201d but there was never any physical set. He doesn\u2019t sound too keen on repeating this kind of filmmaking, at least not any time soon. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \t\u201cIt is not my thing,\u201d Jenkins said of all-digital filmmaking. \u201cIt is\u00a0not my thing. I want to work the other way again, where I want to physically get everything\u00a0there. I always believe that what is here is enough, and let me just figure out what is the chemistry to make alchemy? How can these people, this light, this environment, come together to create an image that is moving, that is beautiful, that creates a text that is deep enough, dense enough, rich enough to speak to someone?\u201d <\/p>\n
\tThe director\u2019s longtime producer Adele Romanski told Vulture that he might direct an Alvin Ailey biopic for Searchlight Pictures next. Whatever Jenkins chooses to do, it is \u201cnot going to be a $250 million movie, right? So we\u2019re going to have to go back to embracing a much more limited tool set.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tEven though he had to work in an all virtual space, Vulture reports that Jenkins tried his hardest to ensure \u201cMufasa\u201d remained a movie with his trademark flourishes. The publication notes the film has \u201cmany long, gliding, unbroken takes that float gracefully toward and around the characters, evoking not the typical Disney-cartoon visual grammar but\u00a0techniques perfected by so-called slow-cinema masters like B\u00e9la Tarr, Jia Zhangke and Gus Van Sant. Jenkins got a note from the parent company worrying that one of the long takes played a little \u2018slow,\u2019 but there was no indication that he was required to implement it.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe were trying to do these scenes in as few shots as possible,\u201d Jenkins explained, \u201ceven though we didn\u2019t have to think that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cMufasa\u201d opens in theaters Dec. 19 from Disney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Disney\u2019s \u201cMufasa\u201d is one of the last remaining Hollywood tentpoles of the year, and it might be director Barry Jenkins\u2018 first and last time making an all-digital movie. Jenkins is the Oscar winner behind acclaimed dramas such as \u201cMoonlight\u201d and \u201cIf Beale Street Could Talk,\u201d and he said in an interview with Vulture that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}