Jenkins’s next planned movie – a sequel to The Lion King – may just reflect this uplift. He watched the original 1994 Disney cartoon “literally hundreds of times” with his nephews, but the chance to make a follow-up to Jon Favreau’s 2019 hit remake, created using state-of-the-art “virtual reality” tools, was intriguing. “There’ve only been five or six films made in the style of this Lion King film. The script is great. It’s a completely new mode of filmmaking. And I was at a point in my career where I felt like I wanted to stretch myself [and] that’s allowed me to do that.”
Jenkins was also encouraged by Chloé Zhao, who has followed her Oscar-winning Nomadland with another Disney blockbuster, the forthcoming Marvel superhero ensemble Eternals. While some will doubtless see this as a worrying trend in cinema, as art-house darlings are snapped up by the studios for their latest cash cows, Jenkins sees it as vital to keep the door wide open for people of colour to direct on this grand, operatic scale. If he’s doing it, it’ll help filmmakers in the future get the same opportunities.
In “two years, three years, four years, five years”, he wants to ensure industry equality across the board. “I didn’t want [studios to say] ‘Oh, but you’re just an indie director from the projects. You can’t possibly make one of these films.’ It’s like, ‘No, Barry Jenkins did it. And so now any damn body can do it.’" In his eyes, The Lion King is a chance for him to lead the way. "So we’re gonna do it, man. We’re gonna put our heart into it, the way we put our heart into everything else.” He stares back. “So that’s what I got, man!”
