Funny, there was an
IMDb thread about this a few weeks ago. The short answer is that because
The Return of Jafar sold 11 million copies and grossed $150 million in profits, this encouraged Disney to make a direct-to-video sequel to
The Lion King. An article from
The Orlando Sentinel reports this:
[quote="
The Orlando Sentinel"]Walt Disney Co., encouraged by $100 million in video sales from an Aladdin sequel, will release a direct-to-video sequel to The Lion King in the next 12 months.
Steve Feldstein, a Disney spokesman, said the company is assembling animation teams for the Lion King project and another Aladdin video sequel.
The Return of Jafar, Disney's first direct-to-video animated film, grossed about $100 million. Analyst Dave Davis of Paul Kagan Associates estimated that the Lion King sequel will gross between $110 million and $165 million and the second Aladdin sequel will gross between $50 million and $90 million. The company's revenue from home-video sales will rise from $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion in fiscal 1994 to about $1.5 billion in 1995, Davis said.
''After Jafar was successful, it was a foregone conclusion that Disney was going to remain in the (direct-to-video) business,'' he said.[/quote]
Here's the long answer:
Return of Jafar was intended to be an hour-long television pilot to the
Aladdin television series, but Tad Stones suggested converting it into a sequel movie. Because of the home video market boom of the 1980s and 90s,
Aladdin sold 10.8 million VHS tapes during its first week, and it would be cheaper and less time consuming to produce a low-budget animated film overseas (half of
Return of Jafar was animated in Japan) than a theatrical one. The experiment worked with
Jafar selling about 11 million copies and grossing millions in profits. So, Disney followed the money, and played the home video market like a fiddle.
As an added note, I don't think the box office failure of
The Rescuers Down Under factored that much into Disney's discouragement from producing theatrical sequels. The movie, which celebrates its 25th anniversary, didn't fail because it was a sequel, but because it was overshadowed by
Home Alone and Jeffrey Katzenberg pulling the marketing funds because of it. A
Lion King theatrical sequel would have sold millions based off its name alone.