My Lion King Forum

Many people believe that the crew of TLK2:SP knew all about Kopa, but just didn't use him.

In a Phil Weinstein interveiw for the Balto movie website on Balto Source, he talks about his role in both Balto 2 and TLK 2.

[Notice: This is a transcript of the audio interveiw]

When someone asks about Kopa, he replies:

Aniu:
Are you familiar with Kopa, the original son of Simba and Nala? And ifso,was there a reason you all opted not to put him in The Lion King 2?

Phil: No…what was his name?

Aniu: Apparently his name was Kopa, and it was—I forget exactly where the fan knowledge comes from, because I’m not—

Skul: [interrupting] I can answer that. Kopa was the son of Simba and Nala in a series of books that were published immediately after The Lion King. And there were six books total, all of them 100-­‐page kids books, but they all had Kopa in them.

Phil:Wow. No, I wasn’t aware of that.

Skul: Yeah. A bunch of people have been wondering why it was Kiara instead of Kopa in Lion King 2. And, I guess not evenyou know the answer.

Phil was a worker on TLK 2, and this information may prove Disney never had anything to do with Kopa at all.

I posted this to clear up all of the fan theories.

[PS: I'm pretty sure this belongs here, it is mostly dealing with TLK 2.]

Curse you, Pocahontas, I was about to make a topic on this. Oh well, here's the actual link: http://www.animationsource.org/sites_co ... erview.pdf . Weinstein's comments on Kopa is somewhere within the middle if any one cares to read it.

Anyway, it does clear up why Kopa was never included into Simba's Pride even though I knew beforehand the filmmakers obviously never heard of Kopa, so that's why they didn't include him.

Same here -- I strongly felt that the makers of SP never heard of Kopa even before reading this interview.

It's a similar story with Speck -- there was a comic published in Disney Adventures shortly after Toy Story came out called "Pup and Circumstance". It featured Andy's puppy, who was named Speck and looked considerably different than Buster, the dog that appeared in Toy Story 2 years later. Buster didn't replace Speck -- it's just that the creators of Toy Story 2 never heard of Speck.

Ah, so that's why they never put Kopa in TLK 2 to begin with. I've been wandering about this for years and now I know.

I always knew that they wouldn't have had purposefully changed Kopa to Kiara, so I was really expecting them not to have known about him.

What I don't understand is the radical design change between Kiara and "fluffy" at the end of the first movie. Even the presentation is different.

The colors are a bit different, but that's it.



Yeah, they look different, but not what I would consider a radical design change. It's just Simba's cub mk1 and mk2.

But you'd have to admit, as DGFone mentioned, the two presentation scenes were completely different from each other. It almost appears as though the first presentation occurred mid-day and the TLK 2 presentation took place at dawn. The colors were also more enriched in the first movie..something I wish was incorporated into the sequel.

I was thinking the opposite. The colors seem to be quite a bit more vivid in SP. It almost looks more like a sunset at the end of the original, which also explains Kopa's more orangish color. Clearly, it is midday at the presentation of Kiara above (although not in the very beginning with the animals marching).

The bigger question is why is Pumbaa darker in SP? That is the most obvious difference. With the exception of TLK fans, nobody notices the subtle differences in Kopa and Kiara.

THOSE INTERVIEWERS. They should have asked about Chaka, Kiara's supposed deleted twin brother too. I've always wanted to know if he really existed at some point in the story or not. =/ Anyway, nice info. The storyboard director did say that the writers may have known about him in the interview, though.

That was a very interesting interview Pocahontas and TheLionPrince. It does not surprise me that The branches of Disney that make (or at least Green-light) the book and the branches that make the movies don't talk to each other. Although since they are all working on the same property, you think that they would talk to each other.