Chaka: the so-called "Kiara's intented brother"

[cleargreenwater]

[quote="Noahcs"][quote="cleargreenwater"]Noahcs, good lord bro, work for lawyers there much?[/quote]
I actually do. My uncle heads a small law firm and I've helped him with research before.[/quote]

*laughs* Yeah I know, I saw that on one of the threads around here. It's a legal profession joke, I'm a legal secretary myself

[Akril]

[quote="Noahcs"]In regards to this "Dan T. Guyton", I couldn't find any information on him. Frankly, the name sounds made up. Searching on the Lion King mailing list for his last name turned up no results, the same can be said for the Disney animation newsgroup. Since these archives both go back to the early 1990s, it begs the question as to where this name would have came from. A simple google search for his entire name turns up nothing except for when its used in the context of the above text. I searched Google Books and Google News for his name both with and without the middle initial. Again, no results. A search for "dan guyton" disney turned up this result but the man's middle initial is different, so I'm guessing it isn't the same person.[/quote]
I did a little searching for Dan Guyton too, and so far, I haven't turned up anything promising either. I found one fanfic where it's mentioned that the author corresponded with both him and Tad Stones, though Stones seems much more "real" than Guyton. I may try contacting him after the holidays are over.

[quote]I also question whether Chaka would have been given a betroyed, that seems more like something you would see if a fanfic. Incest would be pretty obvious to anyone watching the movie unless there was another male in the pride. Who would have fathered him?[/quote]
I guess I don't understand why Chaka's having a betrothed should cause so much concern about the possibility of incest -- after all, Simba was betrothed to Nala, it's never made clear who her father was, and there were no other males in the pride besides Mufasa and Scar.

[Noah]

[quote="Akril"]I guess I don't understand why Chaka's having a betrothed should cause so much concern about the possibility of incest -- after all, Simba was betrothed to Nala, it's never made clear who her father was, and there were no other males in the pride besides Mufasa and Scar.[/quote]
Because the viewers would see three kids and know two of them are Simba's and they would wonder where the third one's dad is. What makes this different from Nala's father is the fact that the viewers know that Simba is the only male. Though as soon as I typed this, I began to see what you are talking about. It doesn't make perfect sense.

[Akril]

Hey guys,

I did what I said I'd do in my last post and contacted Tad Stones. He confessed that his memory of working on SP is a bit fuzzy (not too surprising, considering that it's been more than ten years), and the only thing he remembered with certainty is that SP's plot originally was going to be Scar's son falling in love with Simba's daughter (very "Romeo and Juliet"-esque), which was changed to get rid of the incest unpleasantness (which most of us already know).

He actually asked me to stress his not having a clear recollection of the story so that he didn't inadvertently add any inaccurate information to the pool of knowledge, so be sure to take his words with a grain of salt.


I asked him about Chaka and Shani being different characters or one and the same, as well as how much involvement Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff had with the sequel. His response was:
[quote]I vaguely remember there being twins. In fact, Chaka might have been killed and Scar was blamed. Not sure. Roger and Rob were not actively involved in the development but we probably sent them the scripts out of courtesy.[/quote]
(This puzzled me, since Scar was obviously dead before Chaka was born, but again, Tad admits to being unsure about the details.)


I also asked about Timira/Kirijah and the person credited with passing along the info about her in the Encyclopedia (Dan T. Guyton), but sadly, this was his response:
[quote]Sorry, can't help you. I was off the project when the Romeo and Juliet version was canned.[/quote]

So it looks like the trail has dried up as far as Timira/Kirijah is concerned. I suppose the only lead I could follow now would be tracking down the person who wrote that piece of fan fiction in which the author mentions contacting both Tad Stones and Dan T. Guyton, but I don't know if I'll be able to find him/her.

[TheLionPrince]

^Excellent work, Akril! Although I believe you faithfully, I do hope you have a screenshot of Mr. Stone's statement to prove to unbelieving fans! Also, I sent an e-mail to Jeannie Roussel (producer of TLKII) from her personal website back in December, and haven't received a response since. I hope you have better luck than me!

Along with that, I find it amusing that the people that worked on Simba's Pride filmmakers barely remember now what occurred during production? LKII director Darrell Rooney responded to a statement opening with "...as best as I can remember" when confirming Zira is not Scar's mate, and concluded another statement with "That's about the best as I can remember."

And, yes, I do understand it's been 10+ years since production of the movie was wrapped up, and anyone's memore of what occurred back then can fade away...including mine's.

And yeah...

[quote="Tad Stone"]I vaguely remember there being twins. In fact, Chaka might have been killed and Scar was blamed. Not sure. Roger and Rob were not actively involved in the development but we probably sent them the scripts out of courtesy.[/quote]

In your face, Noah! I knew for sure that Roger and Rob had no active involvement in the sequel!

[Akril]

[quote="TheLionPrince"]^Excellent work, Akril! Although I believe you faithfully, I do hope you have a screenshot of Mr. Stone's statement to prove to unbelieving fans![/quote]
Thank you! And yes, I do have screenshots of the emails.

This is the first one he sent me:

tadstones1-21-12.png (12.25 KiB) Viewed 2411 times

And this is the second one, replying to my message (my email address is hidden, my questions are in black, his replies are in red):

tadstones1-21-12c.png (43.84 KiB) Viewed 2411 times

[quote="TheLionPrince"]Along with that, I find it amusing that the people that worked on Simba's Pride filmmakers barely remember now what occurred during production? LKII director Darrell Rooney responded to a statement opening with "...as best as I can remember" when confirming Zira is not Scar's mate, and concluded another statement with "That's about the best as I can remember."

And, yes, I do understand it's been 10+ years since production of the movie was wrapped up, and anyone's memore of what occurred back then can fade away...including mine's.[/quote]
Makes me wish we'd been able to contact the people that worked on the movie a lot earlier than this. It doesn't help that there's hardly any info on SP's history compared to TLK's. I guess that's Disney DTV sequels for you... *shrug*

And on the subject of Chaka being one of Kiara's early names: from what I can tell, the sole source of that idea is that magazine article you posted earlier, TLP (with the unclear wording of the Unofficial Character Encyclopedia probably adding fuel to the "Chaka=Kiara" fire as well). That article is also the only source listing "Shari" as another of Kiara's names, yet doesn't mention Shani, the name which was so common that it actually showed up in a couple of storyboard sketches! It also says that "Zazu" means stupid, even though most of the Swahili dictionaries I've found, there isn't even an entry for "zazu" (though coincidentally, "zuzu" does mean "stupid").

I've done a little browsing of some of the old messages at the Google group alt.fan.lion-king (1997 and older!) and it seems pretty clear that at one point, Chaka was going to be an actual character in SP and wasn't just an alternate name for Shani/Kiara (I actually found a post where the poster was commenting on that same Australian magazine article and sounding pretty skeptical about its contents). I also found this old FAQ on lionking.org that mentions Tad Stones mentioning Chaka and Shani.

[TheLionPrince]

[quote="Akril"]And on the subject of Chaka being one of Kiara's early names: from what I can tell, the sole source of that idea is that magazine article you posted earlier, TLP (with the unclear wording of the Unofficial Character Encyclopedia probably adding fuel to the "Chaka=Kiara" fire as well). That article is also the only source listing "Shari" as another of Kiara's names, yet doesn't mention Shani, the name which was so common that it actually showed up in a couple of storyboard sketches! It also says that "Zazu" means stupid, even though most of the Swahili dictionaries I've found, there isn't even an entry for "zazu" (though coincidentally, "zuzu" does mean "stupid").

I've done a little browsing of some of the old messages at the Google group alt.fan.lion-king (1997 and older!) and it seems pretty clear that at one point, Chaka was going to be an actual character in SP and wasn't just an alternate name for Shani/Kiara (I actually found a post where the poster was commenting on that same Australian magazine article and sounding pretty skeptical about its contents). I also found this old FAQ on lionking.org that mentions Tad Stones mentioning Chaka and Shani.[/quote]

Yes, I noticed that before when I view the magazine article! But, isn't it obvious that "Shari" is a mispelling of Shani? It's a typo, and it happens every now and then in the world of literature and media. As for the "Zazu meaning stupid", I call it not getting their facts right. To an extent, I still believe the article is still somewhat reliable.

However, with the statements made from Tad Stones alone, I believe again that there was a seperate Chaka character, as it seems "Chaka was Simba's son during early production" is outweighing "Chaka was a working name for Kiara" by a margin...a wide one at least.