Surprisingly, it looks as if The Lion King wasn't submitted by Disney as an animated film for the Golden Globe awards. Released earlier this year, 2019's version of The Lion King is nearly a shot-for-shot recreation of the original animated Disney film from the 1990's, but this time displaying lifelike computer-generated animals instead of the hand-drawn depictions previously used. The Lion King performed astoundingly well at the box office upon release, and it's subsequent placement on Disney's streaming service Disney+ has only led to even more views on the product.
Sadly, the visual effects studio which helped to develop The Lion King's fantastic creatures has recently shut down. The studio, which also worked on the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, is the Vancouver branch of the Moving Picture Company and had previously won an Academy Award for their work on Life of Pi. However, despite the efforts of this animation team, it appears as if Disney did not consider The Lion King to be an animated film.
According to a tweet by The Playlist's Editor-At-Large Gregory Ellwood, Disney apparently did not submit The Lion King as an animated film when applying for Golden Globe award consideration. Instead, the decision to put the heavily CGI-reliant film into the animation category was made by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the non-profit organization consisting of entertainment photographers and journalists who put on the annual Golden Globe awards.
This news mirrors previous reports which saw Disney not submitting The Lion King for Best Animated Feature consideration during the announcements of this year's Oscar nominees. Whether or not Disney's reticence to either call 2019's version of The Lion King an animated film or submit it for the usual awards circuits stems from the fact that it's simply a retelling of the exact same story, or based on the idea they consider it to be live-action and not animated, remains to be seen.
Since The Lion King was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, it's surprising Disney isn't trying to get it into as many awards categories as they can. Although the reactions from both fans and critics have been mixed, thanks primarily to the fact that the more realistic-looking animals just aren't as expressive as their hand-drawn counterparts, Disney's The Lion King was still one of the most popular movies of the year, and the effort put forward by the team at Vancouver's Moving Picture Company VFX studio should not be understated.
Source: Twitter