Mufasa: The Lion King was one of the biggest movies of 2024, telling the origin story of Scar and Mufasa, serving as both a prequel and sequel to the 2019 pH๏τorealistic remake of The Lion King. While Mufasa‘s reviews were fairly mixed, the film managed to become a huge success, earning plenty of money at the box office and finding a dedicated fanbase. Mufasa‘s setting was one of its best aspects, and the filmmakers have revealed exactly how they managed to create Mufasa‘s world.

With Mufasa‘s recent release on digital streaming services, the bonus features of the film have been made available for the first time, revealing plenty of brand-new behind-the-scenes information about the making of the film. One interesting tidbit that director Barry Jenkins revealed is the process by which the creative team was able to create Mufasa‘s version of Africa, as they wanted the film to feel true to the real-life continent while the film was being made on the other side of the world.

Mufasa: The Lion King’s Creative Team Weren’t Able To Travel To Africa

The Team Was Unable To Follow In The Footsteps Of The Original

The most obvious way to do this kind of research would be to travel to the various places around Africa that the film was going to be based on to take notes and make references as to how the art should appear in the film, but Mufasa‘s director and production designer weren’t able to do so. While the film came out in 2024, it was being developed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning that air travel was heavily restricted, and no one was able to make the journey to Africa in person.

This was a big departure for the series, as, famously, many of the artists and animators for the original animated film traveled to Africa in order to research and plan how they were going to make the film look. As Mufasa was made to look pH๏τorealistic as opposed to 2D animated, nailing the feel of every location was even more important than it was in the original film, and the filmmakers being unable to travel to Africa and immerse themselves in the feel of the continent would have been a big issue for the final product.

Mufasa: The Lion King Hired People From Across Africa To Take Reference PH๏τos And Videos

An Unfortunate Circumstance Turned Into Something Even Better

To solve this problem, Mufasa: The Lion King‘s filmmakers hired people from across the continent, getting them to take pH๏τos and videos of the landscapes and landmarks around where they lived in order for the production team to use as reference. While initially, this doesn’t seem to be as good of a solution as actually going there themselves, according to Barry Jenkins, they were actually able to get a much larger breadth of imagery and references to pull from for Mufasa: The Lion King because of this choice.