TikTok, the ultra-popular short-form video app, has hired a top Walt Disney&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/walt-disney" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DIS</a>&nbsp;Co. executive to be its new CEO.



Kevin Mayer, who ran Disney’s video-streaming business, will also serve as the chief operating officer of ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok. Mayer was seen as a favorite to get the top job at Disney but was passed over to replace Bob Iger in favor of Bob Chapek earlier this year.



“Kevin has had an extraordinary impact on our company over the years,” Chapek <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://v/" target="_blank">said in a statement</a>. “Having worked alongside Kevin for many years on the senior management team, I am enormously grateful to him for his support and friendship.”



Disney has been badly damaged by the pandemic as Covid-19 forced it to close its lucrative parks and cruise line businesses. Iger has taken back some control over the company—he remains the executive chairman—while Disney rushed to assemble a $6 billion debt offering in March. It has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/04/22/disney-furloughs-100000-workers-while-top-executives-will-still-get-big-bonuses/">furloughed workers and cut pay</a>&nbsp;with Chapek agreeing to halve his salary and Iger agreeing to forgo one entirely.



Mayer could not be leaving for a more different environment. TikTok was already a big hit before lockdown—and has seen its popularity soar since. It was downloaded more than 315 million times in the first quarter, according to data from SensorTower, which tracks app downloads. That figure represents the most downloads in a single quarter that SensorTower has ever counted up.



Mayer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2020/02/27/did-bob-chapek-win-disneys-latest-game-of-thrones---or-is-it-just-starting/#3738a7f17251">was the deals guy</a>&nbsp;at Disney, acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox. And there was nothing more important to Disney recently than the expansion of its streaming business, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbean/2020/04/08/report-disney-overtakes-netflix-as-top-streaming-app-in-2020/#2d35cc817aa6">has proven a success</a>. Disney+ launched last year and was downloaded 14.1 times in 2019, more than even Netflix&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/netflix" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFLX</a>&nbsp;(11.9 million) or Hulu (8.1 million). Disney said it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2019/11/12/disney-plus-launches-capstone-bob-iger-tenure/#27a9432b2dd1">would spend $1 billion in the first year</a>&nbsp;alone on original content for the streaming service, building out a line-up that already includes the Star Wars series&nbsp;The Mandalorian&nbsp;and soon a recorded version of the musical&nbsp;Hamilton.



Mayer will face some challenges ahead at TikTok. It has become an off-and-on-again target of criticism that its Chinese ownership makes it a security risk. And a group of 20 advocacy groups last week&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/05/14/tiktok-isnt-keeping-its-promises-to-better-protect-kids-critic-groups-say/">filed an FTC complaint</a>&nbsp;that it hadn’t lived up to a deal reached with regulators last year to better protect children using its app.



He replaces Alex Zhu, one of the founders of Music.ly, the China-based app that ByteDance <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/11/10/lip-syncing-video-app-musical-ly-has-been-sold-possibly-for-1-billion/#48312e1a1443">bought in 2017</a> and turned into TikTok. Zhu had made efforts to do what Mayer will now have to do: convince America that TikTok isn’t a threat.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/">Abram Brown</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

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As TikTok Takes Over America, It’s Making A Disney Executive Its New CEO

TOPLINE Netflix is one of the few companies actually thriving during the coronavirus, hitting an all-time high in the market Thursday after becoming more valuable than rival entertainment giant Disney.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="960" height="735" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tiger-King.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44391" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tiger-King.jpg 960w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tiger-King-300x230.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tiger-King-600x459.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tiger-King-768x588.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /><figcaption>&#8216;Tiger King&#8217; has been a huge boon for Netflix, drawing more than 34 million viewers in its first 10 days on the platform, according to Nielsen. NETFLIX</figcaption></figure></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The streamer’s stock climbed 5% by midday, after closing at a record price of nearly $427 per share on Wednesday.



With viewers turning to hits like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/04/08/34-million-people-watched-tiger-king-in-its-first-10-days-on-netflix/#56e0cff52a9a">true-crime documentary&nbsp;Tiger King</a>&nbsp;and comfort-food reruns like&nbsp;The Office&nbsp;and&nbsp;Cheers,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/03/23/exclusive-disney-sees-huge-subscription-spike-as-homebound-audiences-clamor-for-content/#7f50f02e17c4">Netflix is seeing a spike in new subscriptions</a>, according to streaming analytics firm Antenna.



Aside from increased viewership, Netflix is seeing another benefit from the crisis: like the rest of Hollywood, it has had to halt production, says Lightshed partner and analyst Rich Greenfield, freeing up its cashflow as it accumulates revenue.



What’s good for Netflix is also good for its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/reed-hastings/#73a62bcd2782">cofounder and CEO Reed Hastings</a>&nbsp;— his net worth is now $4.9 billion, a $1.2 billion increase since the end of March.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$194 billion. That is how much Netflix&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/netflix">NFLX</a>&nbsp;is now worth, having increased its market value more than $50 billion so far this year. Disney&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/walt-disney">DIS</a>, having been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, is valued below $184 billion, down from nearly $258 billion at the end of 2019. Disney and Netflix are two of the heaviest hitters in entertainment, but they have opposite approaches. While Netflix is entirely dependent on paid subscriptions for revenue, Disney is much more varied, as reliant on tourism and merchandise sales as it is on the content it puts out. While that diversity has traditionally been its strength, it has become a liability as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/04/14/saving-disney-iger-returns-as-coronavirus-batters-the-company-on-all-sides/#37412867e64f">the pandemic forces Disney to shut down theme parks and delay film releases</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



While that pause in production may be good for Netflix’s bottom line now, it could result in significantly less new content in the fall than planned. Even so, Netflix may still be better off than its competitors. “The reality is they have much more content in the pipeline than anyone else right now,” says Greenfield.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/">Ariel Shapiro, </a>Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

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Netflix Stock Hits Record High, Is Now Worth More Than Disney

According to Netflix,&nbsp;Stranger Things 3&nbsp;smashed the streaming giant’s&nbsp; previous ratings record, with over 40 million households streaming the 80s-tastic adventures of Eleven and friends since the&nbsp;July 4 season premiere.



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Over 18 million (or about 45%) of the households streaming&nbsp;Stranger Things 3&nbsp;completed the eight-episode season in the same four-day period.</li><li>The previous record holder was&nbsp;Murder Mystery, an Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston comedy, with over 30 million households streaming during its June opening weekend.</li><li>Netflix’s ratings are&nbsp;voluntarily reported&nbsp;by the company and not available to Nielsen or other traditional third-party audience measurers. Meaning there’s no additional, outside verification of Netflix ratings.</li><li>Although Netflix reigned supreme for years in entertainment streaming, competition from Hulu, Amazon, YouTube and others will crowd the playing field and potentially curb subscriber growth across the board, according to The Street.</li><li>Stranger Things 3&nbsp;is a proven cash cow for Netflix. In addition to beating streaming records, the latest season boasted 75 different product tie-ins as&nbsp;brands jockey for association&nbsp;(and dollars) with hot entertainment properties.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<figure><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?type=text%2Fhtml&amp;key=cfc0fb0733504c77aa4a6ac07caaffc7&amp;schema=twitter&amp;url=https%3A//twitter.com/netflix/status/1148359444188712960&amp;image=https%3A//i.embed.ly/1/image%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fpbs.twimg.com%252Fprofile_images%252F1089957236221329409%252FrsMZ82D3_400x400.jpg%26key%3D8804248494c144f5b4765c41f66c6ed5"></iframe></figure>



What to watch for:&nbsp;Disney. The House of Mouse, with its 2017, $53 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox, controls a wide swath of successful intellectual property outside of princesses and anthropomorphic animals:&nbsp;Star Wars,&nbsp;Avatar,&nbsp;The Simpsons, Marvel superheroes, Pixar and more are under its purview. Which means Disney may be the biggest media empire in history. Combined with having full control of Hulu and the scheduled November launch of Disney+, its own streaming service (targeted to cost half of a monthly Netflix subscription), Disney is poised to&nbsp;steal Netflix’s streaming spotlight.



-Lisette Voytko;&nbsp;Forbes Staff

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Netflix: ‘Stranger Things 3’ Smashes Its Ratings Record

Hulu is poised to enter a new chapter in its history as the decade-old streaming service once dismissed as &#8220;Clown Co.&#8221; moves to refine its identity among a trio of direct-to-consumer services under the control of the Walt Disney Co.



The streaming service offered a glimpse of what&#8217;s to come Wednesday as it announced its programming lineup in a presentation at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Hulu is looking for more adult—and, in some cases, edgier and boundary-pushing—programming, as well as comedies that have something to say, in the mold of its new series&nbsp;Shrill.



The company said its viewer proposition—the ability to watch the stories they love, whenever and wherever they want—is catching on with consumers. Hulu said it increased its total customer base to more than 28 million—26.8 million monthly subscribers and 1.3 million promotional accounts. That&#8217;s up from 25 million paid and promotional accounts reported in January.



Hulu&#8217;s viewers are 20 years younger than those who pay for cable or satellite TV subscriptions — the median age is 31; and some 21 million have either canceled their pay TV subscriptions or never signed up in the first place.



“Hulu’s continued growth, as well as the shows and initiatives announced today, reflect our deep investment in product, programming, brand, customer experience,” CEO Randy Freer said in a statement.



The venerable Hulu will need to differentiate itself as more than a mere cable substitute, as media giants like AT&amp;T&#8217;s WarnerMedia and cable giant Comcast prepare to launch their own streaming services. It&#8217;ll also need a distinct identity within Disney, which gained a controlling interest in the streaming service with its March acquisition of 21st Century Fox and plans to launch a family-focused Disney+ in November.



Hulu called in some serious star-power to highlight its original series, including Margot Robbie, producer of the forthcoming series&nbsp;Dollfacestarring Kat Dennings, Mindy Kaling, who&#8217;s producing an adaptation of&nbsp;Four Weddings and a Funeral,&nbsp;and George Clooney, who stars in a dark, satirical comedy based on Joseph Heller&#8217;s novel,&nbsp;Catch-22.



The streaming service greenlighted&nbsp;Nine Perfect Strangers,&nbsp;starring Nicole Kidman, an adaptation of the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestseller from&nbsp;Big Little Lies&nbsp;author Liane Moriarty. The series, from acclaimed television writer and producer David E. Kelley and John Henry Butterworth, takes place at a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation to nine stressed city dwellers.



Hulu is also benefiting from Disney&#8217;s decision to end its relationship with Netflix, which had created four well-received series based on Marvel characters.



Hulu will add two new live-action series drawn from the Marvel universe,&nbsp;Marvel&#8217;s Ghost Rider&nbsp;and&nbsp;Marvel&#8217;s Helstrom,&nbsp;whichare slated to debut in 2020. For those not versed in the canon: Ghost Rider (aka Robbie Reyes) is an antihero, consumed by hellfire and supernaturally bound to a demon. Meanwhile, Daimon and Ana Helstrom are the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer. Together, the siblings track down the worst of humanity.



The series join a growing superhero roster on Hulu that includes&nbsp;Marvel’s Runaways,&nbsp;which is entering its third season, and previously announcedadult animated series based on the popular Marvel Television characters Hit-Monkey, Tigra and Dazzler, Howard the Duck and Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing (or MODOK).



Following the success of Hulu’s 2019 comedy slate, it ordered second seasons of&nbsp;Pen15,&nbsp;in whichMaya Erskine and Anna Konkle play versions of themselves as 13-year-old outcasts in the year 2000, and&nbsp;Ramy, a series that follows first-generation Egyptian-American Ramy Hassan on a spiritual journey in his politically divided New Jersey neighborhood.



Hulu confirmed its order for&nbsp;The Dropout, a limited series starring Kate McKinnon, who comically bow-leg walked on stage in heels to talk about her portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing company Theranos who is now awaiting trial for fraud.



&#8220;Hello advertisers,&#8221; McKinnon deadpanned. &#8220;I have never been to an Upfront before. If you need the blood of an upfront virgin, I am your gal.&#8221;



The service also said it will partner with Vox Media Studios, David Chang’s Majordomo Media and Chrissy Teigen’s Suit &amp; Thai Productions to develop and produce a slate of premium food-centric programming for Hulu.



&#8211;Dawn Chmielewski; Forbes Staff

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Hulu Offers Glimpse Of An Edgier Future Under Disney’s Control As Subscriber Count Passes 28 Million

At a board retreat in Orlando, Florida, in 2006, a pair of senior Disney executives predicted a seismic shift in the media landscape — one fueled by consumers who would enjoy unprecedented access to content. Their plan? Amass strong enough entertainment brands and franchises to grab the attention of viewers awash in choices.



That insight, part of a “Disney 2015” presentation by its CFO at the time, Tom Staggs, and corporate strategist Kevin Mayer, was delivered a dozen years before Netflix briefly surpassed Disney as the world&#8217;s most valuable media company in 2018. It would inform an aggressive buying binge, in the mold of the Pixar Animation Studios deal of 2006, that would roll up some of the world&#8217;s most recognizable entertainment brands under the Disney banner — Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox. These form the foundation of the coming Disney+ streaming service, which CEO Bob Iger will discuss in detail at an investor day Thursday on Disney’s manicured studio lot in Burbank, California.



Analysts say Disney’s library of blockbuster films and popular TV shows, bolstered by its recent acquisition of Fox’s film and television assets, give it a competitive advantage that should help attract subscribers — even at a time when established rivals, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, have gained a substantial head-start.



Disney and Fox together account for 47% of the top 100 films of all time, based on domestic box office. That’s more than double the nearest competitor, Warner Bros., with 20 hit movies. The combined Disney and Fox libraries also command the largest share of the 100 most popular TV shows, as ranked by IMDB. &nbsp;



Disney plans to mine its Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars franchises for original shows that will appear exclusively on the streaming service, including a live-action Star Wars TV series&nbsp;The Mandalorian, an animated series&nbsp;Monsters At Work, with Billy Crystal and John Goodman reprising their roles as Mike and Sully, and a series based on the Marvel archer character Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner.



“The amalgamation of Disney’s and Fox’s libraries will create an unparalleled combination of great, hard to recreate and memorable content,” said media analyst Michael Nathanson.



Nathanson predicts Disney+ will attract 7.1 million subscribers in its first year, growing to nearly 24 million by the end of fiscal 2022.



A question remains about whether a content company like Disney will be able to match Netflix’s technological prowess. The Los Gatos-based streaming service has been able to draw from its vast trove of user data to deliver recommendations that keep its 139 million global subscribers watching, month after month, and inform programming decisions.



Disney has stumbled on previous digital endeavors, such as DisneyLife, a U.K.-based streaming service that launched in 2015, charging £10 a month for access to some 400 movies, 4,000 TV episodes as well as songs and books. Despite a price drop, it has failed to catch on with subscribers, according to numerous published accounts.



The success of Disney+ is something Iger is staking his legacy on, describing it, during a recent investor call, as “our number one priority.”



That’s a major strategic shift for Disney, which had enabled the growth of Netflix through lucrative multi-year deals, such as the one in 2012 that gave the streaming service exclusive TV rights to new and catalog films, and another, the following year, that handed Netflix access to Marvel’s muscular superhero roster — with ABC Television Studio developing original series based on comic book characters Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.



Netflix became the de facto syndicator for a number of TV shows, noted Nathanson.



The inescapable toll of cord-cutting, fanned by popular services like Netflix, caused a re-calibration inside the Mouse House. Disney’s traditional cash cow, ESPN, has shed 13 million domestic subscribers from its peak in 20013, and Disney Channel also has lost millions of pay TV viewers.



Iger shifted course in 2017, announcing that Disney would pull its content from Netflix and launch its own service in 2019. That August, the company invested $1.58 billion to acquire a majority ownership of BAMTech, the MLB-founded video streaming technology that will power Disney+. That same year, in December, Disney announced its ground-breaking deal to acquire much of Fox, a move that would position Disney as the world&#8217;s preeminent entertainment company — and bulk up its library as it prepares to do battle with Netflix.



The $71.3 billion Fox deal, which closed in March, reunited the X-Men and Fantastic Four with the rest of the Marvel universe, added&nbsp;The Simpsons&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ice Age&nbsp;to Disney and Pixar’s animated roster, and brought James Cameron’s four sequels to the box-office blockbuster Avatar under the Disney banner. It also gave Disney a controlling interest in Hulu, a streaming service jointly owned with Comcast’s NBCUniversal and AT&amp;T’s WarnerMedia, which has amassed 25 million subscribers.



Disney announced a sweeping corporate reorganization in March of 2018, to consolidate its streaming operations under the executive who’d overseen its major acquisitions, Kevin Mayer. Previously, efforts had been fragmented among the different business units, with the film and television groups pursuing different digital strategies, say former insiders.



“Depending on how aggressively Disney intends to invest, and their willingness to accept compressed profit margins, the company has a chance to become a meaningful competitor to Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video,” wrote Brian Wieser, a long-time media analyst who now oversees business intelligence for GroupM, one of the world’s largest media buyers.



-Dawn Chmielewski; Forbes Staff

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How Disney’s Investment In Entertainment Brands Like Marvel and Star Wars Will Power The Launch Of Its New Streaming Service

Making an unforgettable movie is not the only requirement to win the prestigious best picture Oscar. Add millions of dollars for TV and digital ads, plus actors’ travel, hair and makeup for events to promote their work on the busy film campaign trail. 



If the race is close, as it is heading into Sunday’s awards ceremony, studios must dig deeper to gain an edge with the roughly 8,000 voters in the Academy for Motion Picture Arts &amp; Sciences.



Netflix Inc and AT&amp;T Inc’s Warner Bros. are among the distributors opening their checkbooks to try to land the most-coveted golden statuette.



“You have to spend money,” said Matthew Belloni, editorial director at The Hollywood Reporter. “You have to shake hands. You have to have a message for your movie.”



“It’s about working the people out there and getting the academy to know you and to believe in your film,” he added.



For the eventual winner, the investment will pay off. A best picture trophy brings in extra box office dollars, plus cachet to help attract A-listers for future projects.



So from December through late February, actors, directors, producers and writers attend a heavy schedule of lunches, screenings, cocktail receptions and panel discussions, crisscrossing the country to get in front of voters in the industry hubs of New York and Los Angeles.



Aside from the movie’s stars, studios recruit A-list fans to host events, such as a “Roma” screening with Angelina Jolie, part of Netflix’s push to secure the first best picture award for a streaming service.



The “Roma” publicity campaign cost roughly $25 million, according to estimates from Hollywood publication Variety. The tab for Warner Bros.’ “A Star is Born” was just under $20 million, Variety said.



Much of that spending was dedicated to TV commercials, plus online ads on Hollywood-oriented news sites or Facebook. Some ads also are aimed at encouraging consumers to see the films.



Part of the Warner Bros. campaign involved covering a Sunset Strip billboard with a picture of Ally, Lady Gaga’s “A Star is Born” character. The signage is a replica of one seen in the film and looks like a promotion for the fictional star.



Studios also are trying out new experiences, said Marc Becker, chief executive of The Tangent Agency, which works with Hollywood studios on marketing campaigns. Netflix, for example, put together an exhibition of “Roma” costumes and props.



“They have always wined and dined people,” Becker said of awards campaigners, “but now they are immersing them even more in the world of the properties.”



Other films in the best-picture race are “Green Book” and “BlacKkKlansman” from Comcast Corp, 21st Century Fox’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “The Favourite,” Annapurna Pictures’ “Vice,” and Walt Disney Co’s “Black Panther.”



Disney’s campaign elevated “Black Panther” from superhero tale to an important cinematic milestone for its celebration of black culture, Belloni said.



“They’ve successfully reintroduced this comic book movie as a very serious artistic endeavor,” he said, “and they’ve been rewarded for that.” -Reuters



-Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Rollo Ross

91st Annual Academy Awards – Governors Ball Press Preview

Want To Win An Oscar? Spend Millions On The Film Campaign Trail

Set in Kenya’s Hell’s Gate National Park, Disney’s animated film, The Lion King celebrates 20 years on June 15. The Lion King’s stage adaptation of the original 1994 film has grossed more than $5 billion across the globe. The original film is the highest grossing hand-drawn film in history.
It tells the story of Simba, a young lion who is to succeed his father, Mufasa, as king. But after Simba’s uncle Scar murders Mufasa, Simba is fooled into thinking he was responsible and flees into exile in shame and despair.
While growing up with two wastrels, Simba is given some valuable perspective from his friend Nala and his shaman, Rafiki, before returning to challenge Scar to end his tyranny.
The story is set in the kingdom of lions in east Africa, with influences from biblical stories of Joseph and Moses, as well as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Though it has had great success, the production of The Lion King has also had its problems. A dispute arose between Disney and the family of South African Solomon Linda, who composed the song, ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, originally titled ‘Mbube’ in 1939. In July 2004, the family filed a lawsuit for $1.6 million in royalties from Disney. Two years later, Linda’s heirs reached a legal settlement with Abilene Music who held the worldwide rights and licensed the song to Disney.
In 1997, three years after the release of The Lion King, Walt Disney produced the musical stage adaptation of the same name, with the first show in Minneapolis in the United States. The musical went on to become one of the most successful in Broadway history and is still running across the globe to this day.
Britain’s stage production of The Lion King casts a huge number of South Africans. In the current run, 25-year-old Nicholas Nkuna is wowing audiences as the third South African to be cast as Simba, following Brian Temba and Andile Gumbi. Before heading to Britain to play Simba, Nkuna was the second youngest black Phantom in the musical The Phantom of the Opera.
“I auditioned for the show for two years and got a call back for the final in the third year. I went to Florida in America to do my final call back. Towards the end of Phantom, they rang me to let me know I got the job,” says Nkuna.
In July 2012, Nkuna moved to Bristol to start rehearsals for the spectacle.
Playing the lead is a huge responsibility and expectations are high. But as time went on, Nkuna says he eased into the role.
“It was incredible; it was eye-opening. The standard of performance is different, the preparation is different. With The Lion King, there’s acting, there’s singing and dancing and you also have the animal elements to it. So you’re half a lion, half a human,” he says.
“You need to learn how to move like a lion. It was interesting to do those workshops. We did Javanese movements. There’s certain cultural depth that they do that’s sort of similar to how humans would move animal-like.”
After two years of traveling with The Lion King, Nkuna has decided to end his journey as Simba to focus on his music and other business adventures.
But the show must go on. In March 2013, The Lion King was launched in Brazil and for the first time in Portuguese. It has been performed in six other languages. It has also been seen on every continent besides Antarctica.
The creators of The Lion King are probably sitting somewhere saying to themselves, ‘Hakuna Matata’, as the Lion King could enthral audiences for decades to come.
<h4>The Soul Of Simba</h4>
The opening scene of The Lion King is unforgettable. As the yellow African sun rises over the horizon, a Zulu voice cries ‘Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba’. It means ‘Here comes a lion, Father’.
That voice belongs to South African award winning musician Lebohang Morake, but to the world of arts and entertainment he’s known as Lebo M.
Morake grew up in Soweto, Johannesburg. From a young age, he started singing in a local pop band. In his first interaction with the music business he saw corruption. At the age of 12, he released his first single Celebration which received a lot of local success. However, Morake only received $20.
After finding success in Lesotho, Morake received a scholarship to study music in the United States (US). It was there that he met world-renowned composer Hans Zimmer. The two worked together on the score for the film The Power of One.
Years later, Hans Zimmer was hired to score the most successful animated movie in history, The Lion King. Zimmer wanted to make the music authentically African and there was only one person he had in mind for the job.
Zimmer traveled to South Africa to find Morake. The two returned to the US where they created a soundtrack to the film that won them numerous awards as well as a Grammy for best instrumental arrangement with accompanying vocal for The Circle Of Life.
Riding on the success of the film, Morake was then commissioned to write the music for The Lion King musical which instantly became a Broadway hit. Morake composed new songs for the production which went well with the music from the original movie.
It has become one of Broadway’s longest-running shows with productions in several countries around the world.
Morake’s original compositions and voice can be heard in a number of films including Chicken Little, Mighty Joe Young, Congo and Tears of the Sun. When you listen to Morake sing, you may not understand the lyrics but you will understand why everyone calls him the voice of The Lion King.

Tag: Disney