King of the Kalahari

[PrinceTaka]

King of the Kalahari, a Treatment by Tom Disch. How many of you actually knew that before The Lion King was called King of the Jungle it went actually by the name King of the Kalahari. Well atleast a tretment was named in that way and that would later to be known as The Lion King.

It was written in October 88' by Thomas Disch and was nine pages long. Several new names appear in the text which are: Skobi, Rego, Sheena, King Brond and Mruki.

Unfortunately only one page is scanned and even that one has a note on top of it. If you look at the screen from right angle or tinker with the brightness-contrast you can somehow read the text under the note and the page.

You can read the page here.

http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/news/?p=59

[TheLionPrince]

I did. I read about Disch's treatment on The Lion King Wikipedia page many years ago yet I never read the actual treatment. I would love to, tohugh!

However, I'm confused about one thing. Since Disch's treatment was based on Hamlet, then, the Shakespearean influences in the final film originated from him, if his treatment was accepted by the filmmakers. However, the official story on the origins of the Shakespearean influences is when the filmmakers changed Scar's role from being a rogue lion to being Mufasa's brother, thus becoming Simba's uncle. At that time, the story was considered "original", but when they noticed the Hamlet parallels, they took more and more inspiration from the play.

Oh well, I guess it's best to believe the official story since Disch's treatment was considered "work-for-hire."

[DGFone]

I think what happened was that the very original script was much more influenced by Hamelt, but that was not taken very seriously. When The Lion King got the production green light, the script was the "King of Beasts / King of the Jungle" version (viewtopic.php?f=31&t=22573). In the actual production, all the ideas started to come together, and then we get ideas like Scar being changed from a rogue to being Mufasa's brother. It was then that the team realized that they were heading back to the Hamlet direction, and then decided to include even more Hamlet inspired material.

As seen in this alternate ending, when the script was the closest it got to Hamlet, we got lines like "Goodnight, sweet prince." It was really then when the team realized that they had gone too far back to Shakespeare, and altered the script further until it became what we have now.

So in the end, The Lion King's script was on a pendulum, starting at a heavily Hamlet inspired version, to almost leaving Shakespeare behind, to again coming back in full force, before finally settling somewhere in between.

[Regulus]

[quote="DGFone"]So in the end, The Lion King's script was on a pendulum, starting at a heavily Hamlet inspired version, to almost leaving Shakespeare behind, to again coming back in full force, before finally settling somewhere in between.[/quote]

It's the circle of life everything.