My Lion King Forum

First, I want to say that I'm a long time reader, first time poster.

Second, I was wondering if anybody was aware that the hyenas were originally supposed to appear in The Lion King 2. I was scanning through Google News Archives and discovered a 1996 New York Daily News article about Cheech Marin and it says that he just finished reprising his role as Banzai on the sequel. The full quote is: [quote]In addition to "Bridges," Marin will be busy writing a Warner Bros. film, "Cheech the Bus Driver," based on his hit 1994 children's album of the same name. He also has just reprised his voice role as a hyena in Disney's straight-to-video animated sequel to "The Lion King."[/quote]
Here is a link to the article: http://articles.nydailynews.com/1996-08 ... marin-cops (see next to last paragraph)

I'm not sure if anybody already knew this, but I felt like sharing it anyway. Does anyone know what part the hyenas were going to play?

Welcome to the site!
Yes, I had known that the hyenas were to appear alongside the Outlanders, but Disney decided against it because they killed Scar. Why would Zira team up with the, er, people... that killed her dear Scar?
I hadn't seen this article before, though. Cheech must have been kind of sad to hear he was cut. I'd be.

Speaking of roles getting cut, I found another article mentioning that Thomas Haden Church (Jack in Sideways, Sandman in Spiderman 3) was going to voice a rhino. That article is here: http://www.tinyurl.com/lionking2011 but requires a fee. You can see the snippet of the information from Google's search results page here: http://www.tinyurl.com/lionking2011b

I never knew this. I kinda understand why they decided to not put the hyenas in the sequel. It's still a darn shame that they never made it into the movie, though.

Wow, that's interesting! I didn't know the heyenas were supposed to appear in the sequel originally! Maybe they were supposed to be a second antagonist alongside Zira and her pride, and there was some subplot involving them. I couldn't see Zira teaming up with those that killed her "beloved Scar".

Interesting finds, Noah, but I already knew for quite some time that the hyenas were originally to be Zira's allies after reading that from this website. It's a fan site so I wasn't really sure if it was reliable or not. However, I never knew Cheech Marin actually reprised his role, which probably means he recorded some audio outtakes for a scene. It would be cool if Disney releases this to the public on the upcoming Blu-Ray release, though I doubt they will.

And, I never knew Thomas Haden Church was going to voice a rhino, and judging his own words, he seemed pretty excited for the role. It's just too bad his character was never included into the final film.

And so we ended up with Nuka, huh?

I knew they tossed the idea of the hyenas being in it around, but I am like dying for outtakes now that there's a possibility that there's actual voice recordings.

*cough*It would be about the only thing that would convince me to buy SP*cough* (Sorry mods that I'm consisently negative about this film but really I'm not actively trying to troll I bag on it a lot out of pure devotion to the original.)

I appreciate all the feedback. I'll keep scanning the archives and if I find anything else I'll let you know.

[quote="TheLionPrince"]I never knew Thomas Haden Church was going to voice a rhino, and judging his own words, he seemed pretty excited for the role. It's just too bad his character was never included into the final film. [/quote]

This is new information to me as well.