My Lion King Forum

I'm undecided- I know there are lots of fans and lots of non-believers. So plae yor votes! Lets see what the majority is!

Depends what you consider by "real". He has his reality - 6NA books. This is a very universe he belongs to.

But I voted "no" because I still can't consider him cannon. Movies are what matters for me, and it's simply not the place for him.

Kopa is just a glorified fanfic character, basically. Not that I have anything against Kopa fanfics, of course.

He's good for those "what-ifs," but other than that, at the end of the day, I only really consider the first movie to be absolute canon.

Go ahead, Kopa and Kiara fans, hate me!

Yep, yep he is definly real. 6NA, Cannon, same thing. Weather it is a comic or a movie, who cares! Weather it is written by disney or some other author who cares. Kopa is still real. Why is it always kopa pick on, why don't people pick on Ahadi, or Uru? Neither of them are in the movie. Lol, this is the second time i posted exactly where reg did lol.

It depends by what you mean by "real".

Is Kopa real as in he is a character found only in The Lion King: Six New Adventures and some German audio tapes? Or he is real as in is he is an existing film character?

He is a real character that appears in the Six New Adventures novel series, and here's a picture of him:


However, Kopa only exists in that particular book universe. He was indirectly denied by the original filmmakers on the audio commentary when they named the cub at the end, "Fluffy". Therefore, he is not the cub held up at the end so he is not an existing film character.

Fastforward some years later, Phil Weinstein (a storyboard director on The Lion King II) confirmed in an interview that the production crew had no knowledge of Kopa during the making of film. The full transcript of the interview can be found here. However, here's the main excerpt of what was said:

Phil Weinstein interview wrote:Aniu: Are you familiar with Kopa, the original son of Simba and Nala? And if so, 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 even you know the answer.
Phil: No, you’re going to have to track down—gosh, I can’t even remember. Who was it…was it Darrell
Rooney that directed Lion King 2? Is that right? I think he was the one who ended up taking it to the finish
line.
Aniu: Okay.

[Note from Skul: Yes, Darrell Rooney was the director]

Phil: So you’ll have to find him or one of the writers and ask them. They might know.
Aniu: Okay. We’ll definitely have to track him down and eventually ask that question.

Someone named KieranTheWolf (who I later found out to be SuperBabySimba, who was once a user here) contacted Alex Simmons, Kopa's creator, via email. Simmons admitted he was never contacted or involved with the sequel's filmmakers at all:



In conclusion, Kopa is not an existing film character as he was never known onto the filmmakers therefore no hint of his existence is made in the film universe. The Lion King II makes it clear that Kiara is the cub at the end of the film, and in the end, she became "Fluffy". However, he is a real character that exists in an alternate universe where Simba has a son.

I can't really say it any better than TheLionPrince. He's real in the sense that such a character was created at one point, but he was never part of the movie universe.

I say no. The actual TLK movies are what matters to me and what I consider which characters are real. I believe Kiara is real since she appears in Simba's Pride, not Kopa. She's Simba's child, so Kiara matters to me more than Kopa.

I accidentally voted No, but Kopa is a real character, but his place in The Lion King Universe is debatable.

Canon is the appropriate word which I assume you meant by this.

No Kopa is not Canon. The 'Six New Adventures', the book series he appeared in was not created by Disney and they denied it. I don't know how direct a denial it was but they obviously don't acknowledge it which is the same thing.
http://www.mylionking.com/wiki/The_Lion ... Adventures

The original filmmakers did not consider Kopa nor Kiara for that matter which is explained here:
http://www.mylionking.com/wiki/fluffy

The cub presented at the end of the original film, nicknamed 'fluffy' had no identity or even gender but was later used in an official trailer for the second film as Kiara when it went into production.
If nothing else does, this clearly states that no other cub was officially considered by Disney in between.

So you could say Kopa is just barely above a fanfic character, his story may have been published but since it's not Disney's it's technically a form of fanfic.
Kind of like the book series' you see for television shows; Charmed, Monk, Quantum Leap, Ghost Whisperer and probably more. Those were all written by people who had their own ideas for SLs, the show creators and writers didn't come up with them.