LF Examiner exclusive! Lion King coming to LF theaters

"The Lion King" will be re-released exclusively to IMAX and other
giant-screen theaters on January 1, 2003, the Walt Disney Company
announced Monday to an
invited audience of LF and conventional exhibitors. A four-minute LF
clip from the Oscar-winning 1994 film was shown to the group of 150,
most of whom were attending the annual conference of the Giant Screen
Theater Association in Chicago. The highest grossing film in Disney's
history, "The Lion King" will be digitally re-rendered for its LF
release.
   The event was held at the Regal IMAX theater in Lincolnshire, IL, and
featured the first industry screening of the complete LF version of
"Beauty and the Beast," which will open in some 80 LF theaters on
January 1, 2002. Lylle Breier, vice president of Buena Vista Pictures
Distribution, also showed clips from two previously announced original
LF films now in production, "Ultimate X," on ESPN's Extreme Games
competition, and "The Young Black Stallion," which is being produced by
Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.
   The LF version of "Beauty and the Beast" contains a new song, "Human
Again," that was storyboarded but not included in the original release.
A similar situation exists with "The Lion King," for which Elton John
and Tim Rice wrote the song "Warthog Rhapsody," also storyboarded but
never animated. Disney did not say whether the LF edition will include
this sequence.
   The next issue of LF Examiner will include further details on this
story, as well as complete coverage of the GSTA conference.