[officialleafan]

I have another. This one will shock you.

Did the Disney studio steal Kimba The White Lion and rework it as their "original story", The Lion King? They certainly give that impression with their corporate stance ("we never heard of Tezuka nor Kimba until after The Lion King was released"). And why would they have filed suit to try to prevent the showing of Tezuka Productions' 1997 Jungle Emperor Leo movie at the 1998 Toronto FantAsia Film Festival? (Jungle Emperor was the original title for Kimba The White Lion.) It seems quite simple; Kimba had been kept out of sight in North America for 20 years by that time. And once you can see the two together...



I'm sure you've heard how every character in The Lion King has a matching character in Kimba, all the way down to the level of both having a sage mandrill mis-identified as a baboon.



The shame of the matter is that the Disney company is sticking to their official line --that their people never heard of Kimba before The Lion King was released-- even in the face of logic and evidence. As Robin Pen pointed out (in the essay referenced above), if we were to take their statement at face value, it actually means they were stupid and irresponsible. But more than that, many examples say just the opposite of the Disney statement.

* On July 19, 1993, Roy Disney referred to the central character in The Lion King as "Kimba".

* Matthew Broderick said that he originally thought he had been cast for a remake of Kimba, "the white lion in a cartoon when I was a kid".

* Shawn Keller, top Disney animator, wore a Kimba costume (that he had made himself) to The Lion King 'cast' party and photo session.
















Anyone still want to try to convince me it's all a coincidence? Peter and Rochelle Schweizer interviewed Disney animators and report that while working on the Lion King the animators held up stills from Kimba for comparison to their own work.

Kimba is one of the landmarks of animation. The Disney company has earned over 1.5 billion dollars from The Lion King but has not given either any sort of compensation to Tezuka Productions nor credit to Osamu Tezuka. I know their creative people know better. In and of itself, it's not a crime that they did take elements from Tezuka's work--there are also elements in The Lion King that would seem to come from Kipling's Jungle Books (not the Disney version) and from a famous pre-WWII Nazi propaganda film (Triumph of the Will). Cultural references are to be expected. But when a work derives so much from another, denying the source is wrong. To deny the source does an injustice to Osamu Tezuka, the original creator, and to Disney's own people who love Tezuka's works.

Why must the Disney company take such a stance about their main source of inspiration for this film? Could it be that The Lion King started out originally to be a remake of Kimba The White Lion?

* As stated here, the similarities between the two are many, and well documented.

* The Disney corporate stance, that none of Disney's people knew of Kimba before the movie was released, has been exposed as untrue.

* The most congenial theory up til now has been that the creative staff, given a chance to produce a lion story, decided to make it somewhat of a tribute to the TV show they knew and loved. That theory is an attractive one, but fails to explain the extreme extent to which similarities to the earlier production appear in the later production. Lots of movie makers include tributes to those who went before them. A tribute doesn't leave people involved with the earlier production up in arms over being plagiarized.

So, here's my question: Was The Lion King was originally intended to be Disney's big-screen re-make of Kimba The White Lion, but when things didn't go as planned in regards to obtaining the rights to it, were changes made to transform it into "Disney's first animated feature based on an original story"?

* Fact: The rights to Kimba the White Lion were tied up in legal battles for many years, beginning when the original production company, Mushi Productions, went bankrupt in 1973. NBC was forced by the FCC to sell its rights before its original contract expired in 1978. Nobody knew who had the US rights to Kimba from 1978 on. However, there was some sort of action in 1993 that led to the production of a new English-language version of Kimba -- the "1993 version" that has been shown around the world and is now on the air in the U.S.

* Hearsay (although heard from several sources): Disney was right in the thick of the battle to obtain rights to Kimba.

* Pieced together from various reports: Right Stuf International was prepared to release Kimba to home video in 1993, but this was delayed by the court action. And around the same time Disney announced they were delaying the release of Lion King.

Disney is not accustomed to losing its legal battles. So, now add this speculation into the picture: What if at one point the outcome was such a "sure thing" that it was considered safe to go ahead with the movie re-make idea?


What do you think?