How did Disney use its Animal Kingdom park to create the live-action Lion King?
When Disney opened its Animal Kingdom park in 1995, it was a bigger play than the public may have realized. Sure, it was a cool immersive zoo theme park launching on the heels of the success of the mega-popular movie The Lion King, but it was also a way for Disney to help itself in some sense. The park would serve as an outlet for the company’s conservation philanthropy, and a natural extension of the Walt Disney company’s longstanding relationship with animals. (We are talking about a company built around a couple of mice, a duck, and a dog, after all.) Disney animators had long studied real-life animals in their natural environments to help better their sketches, and Animal Kingdom would help the company provide an in-house way to make that happen.