When did TLK take place?

[KopsTheTerminator]

I personally never thought it took place in our universe. There seems to be absolutely no human influence in the movie, so I just assume it's in an alternate, human-free version of our universe. Either that, or it's in a national park... or like AdAstra said, before humans came in the area.

Officially, I don't think Disney meant to place it in a specific timeline. It's just unimportant.

[TheLionPrince]

Just to let you know, this topic has already been touched on: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=19235 But, you can still read the comments on the given topic if you want more opinions.

However, mine's stays constant. Despite the pop culture references throughout the movie (i.e. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"; Arsenio Hall's "hoo hoo" chant), I'm certain the filmmmakers didn't give much thought as to what time period the film is meant to be set in. I'm sure they wanted the film to be timeless so audiences can relate with the film.

In the end, no matter what time period you can say the film is set in, it wouldn't affect the story not one bit.

[Noah]

I always thought that it takes places either in 1994 (since it was released then) or during the times of the other Disney animated movies.

[DGFone]

Again this topic? What happened to the old one?

I said in the older topic that The Lion King doesn't have a time. It could be in the past, present, or future. This is because the movie is meant to be timeless. They purposefully don't mention the time it is set at in the movie precisely to keep the year uncertain. In early drafts, the time-skip after Hakuna Matata said "Kenya 2 years later". This was later removed for good reasons - we know that The Lion King is set in Africa, but not where or when specifically. In the "Circle of Life" sequence, we see both Victoria Falls and Mt. Kilimanjaro. The distance between them is 2500 Km, or roughly 1500 Miles. There is no way that The Pridelands stretch from one to the other. These places were shown to show us that we are in Africa, not that the Pridelands are there. (Except for the shot of the elephants, you never see Mt. Kilimanjaro again for the rest of the movie).

The natural instinct is to give The Lion King a time zone, but really, it doesn't have one. It doesn't belong in an era. It is in a way more timeless than even the old fairy tales, which are generally set in the middle ages. As for the Lion King: if it's in a time when lions exist, then it works.

[Phoenix-Kat]

In my Lion King fanfics, it takes place in the present era, somewhere on the borders of South Africa, Botswanna and Zimbabwe. But for the most part it occured in South Africa. I wasn't into the Hallow Earth Theory until very recently and I'm working on a Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic that the hallow earth theory is a MAJOR part of the story. If I had been into it when I was writing Lion King fanfics, I would have had a feild day. All those caves in the Pridelands! For the most part, I think the Pridelands and the setting is a "fantasy Africa" and fan fic writers can have a little fun and use their imaginations when coming up with location.

[Animal of the Wild]

I consider the Timon and Pumbaa series to be canon, so I'd say within the last 30 years.

[juhouh]

Somewhere between 1400-2004

- They know what are the guns (SP)
- Nala's real date of birth is at June 1994 (meanwhile the others are unknown) and it did take 10 years after she met Simba again

Note: those are just another "could be"-facts that aren't accurate in any way

[DGFone]

If you do take Sp's jokes as canon, then The Lion King could have happened no more than a century (more like 60 years) ago, due to Timon's threat of using Pumbaa's tail as a symbol to show that the warthog is as lethal as a machine gun / shotgun.

On the other hand, that might have simply been a break from canon for the sake of humor, although while such humor was used to great effect in Aladdin, The Lion King didn't use this humor for obvious reasons, and there shouldn't be a reason for SP to change that.