Jon Favreau Just Did Something That Has Never Been Done Before for Nat Geo's 'Lion'

'Lion' Was a Story That No One Could Have Predicted Could Happen

"Nobody's ever done that before."

Lion is the first nature documentary to follow a lion's journey from cub to king, and that was a surprisingly emotional journey for me to watch. Walk me through what that process was like for you guys from your perspective, and what drew you to the project to the very from the beginning?

MIKE GUNTON: Okay. Well, I mean, what drew us to the project? Let me start with that. You don't get the opportunity to do what you just described, to follow one pride of lions for that length of time, and to have the opportunity to — we don't know exactly what story was going to turn out — but to have the opportunity to tell an emotional, intense, on-the-shoulder-of-a-character story, and it turned out to be a story that none of us could have ever imagined. Jon has been saying earlier that we knew this was going to be a cool lion pride, and it was lots of dynamics, lots of politics, and we were probably going to end up following what happened to these four super females, almost like matriarchs. But as it turned out, one of those females was a very old female, and she had a cub, and it was probably going to be her last. And that emerged as the story over the time that we followed, and as you say, it's a cub-to-king story, and that is unique. Nobody's ever done that before.

Jon, what about you?

JON FAVREAU: We had been looking at [Mike's] work a lot for Jungle Book and Lion King, the work on Planet Earth, because we were looking for reference as we were doing visual effects and animation for those projects, and we began collaborating on a project called Prehistoric Planet, where we followed a documentary with segments following dinosaurs 60 million years ago, the plates were real, so I learned all the tricks and techniques that they had used for the documentaries, and then we would lay in animated dinosaurs. And while we were collaborating on that project for Apple, he came to me with this opportunity of what he just described, and I enjoyed working with Mike. I decided to give it a shot at something I had never done before. I didn't realize how much control we actually had over the documentaries by having animation, and now we were resigned to whatever fate this pride of lions presented us with, and it was a very bumpy road. But we ended up with something quite magical.

Following Kio Was a Major Gamble for 'Lion,' but It Paid Off

"There is no script, and there is no guarantee that any of your characters that you are falling in love with will survive."

Obviously, with Prehistoric Planet, you can plan it out a little bit more, right?

FAVREAU: Absolutely.

You're not following actual dinosaurs, although that would have been really cool. But how difficult is it going into something like this, not knowing what kind of story you're going to be formulating and stumbling upon with Kio's journey? What is the process that goes into that? I feel like that's the most unpredictable level of doing a nature documentary.

FAVREAU: It is, and there's always a level of spontaneity and unpredictability to even making a live-action film where you don't know what the performances are going to be like. There are moments that you capture, and in the editing room, you rewrite the story. You add music. Editorially, you have a lot of control over things, but here, there is no script, and there is no guarantee that any of your characters that you are falling in love with will survive, especially over the course of so many years. It was very difficult to follow these characters, and the stories were merging, and as a writer, I was starting to see how I was hoping things would play out, but you have no control over any of it.

It's hard to express how long this process was. We started planning it five years ago. We followed them for the better part of a year, and then we got into the rainy season and had to leave; the camera crews would leave. We had an amazing support system with people in the field who were tracking the lions, filming the lions, cutting together the footage. It all has to be pre-digested, and then you watch these long string-outs of what the stories are starting to do, so there's an initial culling phase. But it's still hours and hours and hours of footage following dozens of different lions, and only at the end of the process did we shape the story to follow this one young lion as we realized that he was going to prevail.

But I remember every rainy season we would have zero visibility into what was happening, and then we would come back, the team would get back into the field in the Maasai Mara, and then I would get that phone call. They spotted him; he survived the winter. That was a big weight off my shoulders. Each year, his odds got better as he got more self-sufficient, and he started to form his own group of young male lions. And then it became even more interesting because then all of those dynamics played out in a way that, you know, this was the first time around with me for lions. I know [Mike] had been through it with Dynasties.

GUNTON: But not like this. I mean, that's why nobody does this kind of show normally. I mean, this is very unusual because it's too risky, it's too stressful, and the rewards can sometimes not be great. You can put your chips on the wrong counter. We just got a bit of luck and a bit of skill. We put our chips on the right one. But as John was saying, as time goes on, you're putting all your chips, more and more chips, on the same character, and that makes it even more stressful because you can break your back.

I didn't even think about the fact that the lion could die and you'd have to pivot in the story?

GUNTON: Well, the first year is the critical year. I mean, 50% of cubs do not make it through their first year. And, in fact, I believe that Kio is the only cub of his generation, of that whole pride, that made it to adulthood. Yeah. So, we did back Red Four or whatever it is on the roulette wheel. We picked a tricky number, but it paid off.

'Lion's Connections to 'The Lion King' Made the Docuseries What It Is

"...it was a kind of seminal moment because we knew we were in."

Mike, I know you've worked on a lot of nature documentaries in the past, and it seems like the length of this documentary's filming is very long in comparison to the other ones, is that true?

GUNTON: Yeah.

Four years seems like quite a long time.

GUNTON: It is exceptionally long. As it turned out, it's what we needed. As it turned out, it takes four years for a young male cub to go through all these stages. The first year is critical to get to a point where he is in a coalition, which is with brothers. And [to get to] the stage when he might be able to take over another pride is four years; by coincidence, that was the time.

FAVREAU: And we were always waiting for: is he going to, himself, have a cub? And to me, it's very hard for me to remove this from the experience of working on Lion King, and that cycle of life for Simba is a very similar— that's the section of Simba's life that you follow as well. So, to me, I just started to see similarities as the story was unfolding, and that's when I called up Hans Zimmer, and I was like, "Am I imagining something, or does this remind you of...?" And he got it right away and said, "Oh, absolutely!" And he started sending us music and joined the project. And between the music and the beautiful human performances of the instruments and the Maasai singers and the choir, all of that emotion that he brought to it...

When you're making a doc, we made the commitment not to adjust anything digitally, not to add or remove characters using visual effects, not to paint out flies or other vehicles. The only thing we had at our disposal was music and the editing room; what we chose to include, what characters we followed, which characters we chose not to follow or removed to create greater clarity. But in the beginning, we were following dozens of different lions, and it was only at the end of this process that we saw everything that we had and shaped it as you would with dailies from a narrative film.

GUNTON: Actually, when Kio's theme emerged from Hans' extraordinary studio, it was a kind of seminal moment because we knew we were in. We've got this theme that is Kio, and it's a fantastic theme, and it plays in your head. And when we were out there in the field, you could hear this song playing in your head, and it sounds a bit weird, but it does interact. It makes you think about his character even more in relation to that music. It's a very interesting alchemy, all this process, there are so many ingredients that go into this that make this end, which is almost impossible to understand until you've done it. It's a remarkable experience.

Jon Favreau Gives Updates on His 'Oswald' Miniseries

"A big part of it was mixing the high-tech and the low-tech."

I'm excited for Oswald. I'm really looking forward to seeing the 2D animation and live-action being worked together. How are you approaching such a classic character to keep it relevant and exciting for a modern audience?

FAVREAU: You know, early on, as we were approaching this character, remember, this is a project that I've been wanting to do for many, many years. I first spoke about it with Andy Jones, my partner, 10 years ago when we were working on Jungle Book. Ever since they got the rights back, I thought it was a really interesting character with a lot of emotion, humor, simplicity, innocence, and I love the history of that character and how Walt [Disney] lost the rights to the character, and then the rights came back. Bob Iger got the rights back to him. And I've been working on stories for how to present it, and now, on this three-part Disney+ miniseries, we'll be presenting this story in February.

A big part of it was mixing the high-tech and the low-tech. We decided pretty early on that we were going to partner up with Sergio Pablos and his SPA Studios and do 2D animation with hand-shading to make it appear to be 3D. We were able to recruit a bunch of animators, many of whom were 2D animators for Disney, who no longer do 2D animation for Disney, so we assembled this wonderful team of artists, and then did live-action photography. So on the one hand, the techniques are 100-year-old techniques of just hand-drawn animation, mixed with compositing and visual effects to help integrate that character into the modern world, and we set it on the backdrop of many classic Disney locations.

We filmed at the site of the old Hyperion Studios. Well, the setting is there; that studio doesn't exist anymore. But also went to Burbank, to the lot, to Walt's office, and filmed in Disneyland for three weeks. So, on the one hand, it's a nice story with a bunch of middle schoolers discovering this little character, as the character discovers what has happened in the last 100 years since he's been separated. He learns about the legacy of Walt Disney, who he, of course, remembers as the person that brought him to life.

His dad! Thank you so much for spending time with me and talking about this series. I can't wait for people to watch it. It was a very invested four hours of me binge-watching the show and being like, "I need him to survive this!"

GUNTON: That's great to hear!

FAVREAU: Yeah, no, it was wonderful. This being at National Geographic, it's gonna be on Disney+. To be a part of all the projects that you mentioned that I'm looking forward to. I'm excited for, of course, Starfighter, Oswald, I'm excited to share that with the world. All the Marvel announcements that were made were super exciting. And I was fortunate enough to see footage of all that stuff. Were you at D23? They showed a lot of stuff from Avengers, from Starfighter.

No, I wish!

FAVREAU: Well, you can see it online, and all of it looks really exciting. And I look forward to all of it.

That's fantastic. Also, Ahsoka Season 2, I'm very excited for.

FAVREAU: That one I have seen, and I could say that one is quite wonderful. Dave Filoni did a great job with the cast.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.