The producer of the Lion King, Don Hahn, told the public that Mufasa and Scar voiced by James Earl Jones and Jeremy Irons respectively were not brothers in the iconic film. Even though 23 years have passed, the Disney classic is still arguably the best animation movie. After all this time, Hahn has revealed that Mufasa and Scar weren’t brothers by blood, which shocked the fans.
While he spoke with Hello Giggles, he said: “[While making the movie] we talked about the fact that it was very likely [Scar and Mufasa] would not have both the same parents. The way lions operate in the wild. When the male lion gets old, another rogue lion comes and kills the head of the pride.”
He added: “What that does is it causes the female lions to go into heat [to reproduce], and then the new younger lion kills the king, and then he kills all the babies. Now he’s the new lion that’s running the pride.”
“There was always this thing about well, how do you have these two [male] lions? Occasionally there are prides that do have two male lions, in an interesting dynamic because they’re not equals [since they don’t have the same parents]. One lion will always kind of be off in the shadows. We were trying to use those animal truths to underpin the story so we sort of figured Scar and Mufasa couldn’t really be from the same gene pool,” explained Hahn.
He concluded: “In fact, that’s what [Scar] says. There’s a line, he goes, ‘I’m from the shallow end of the gene pool.’ When he’s talking to Mufasa, when Mufasa gets mad at him for not coming up to the coronation of Simba.”
At the moment, The Lion King live action remake is being developed, and we will see Jones as Mufasa once again. Chiwetel Ejiofor will give his voice to Scar. Beyonce could play Nala, whereas Seth Rogen, John Oliver, and Billy Eichner are also onboard.
