The Lion King’s Scar is one of the top-tier Disney villains, and tackling the iconic character would delight any actor. That’s why Kelvin Harrison Jr. is overjoyed to play the role in Barry Jenkins’s upcoming Disney prequel.
As we’ve reported, the award-winning Moonlight director is set to tackle a new spin on The Lion King story, telling a prequel tale following Mufasa and his brother Taka (who would eventually become Scar). Aaron Pierre steps in the role of Mufasa, while Kelvin Harrison Jr. voices the villain.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ about his latest film Chevalier, the actor opened up on tackling Scar and what it’s like joining yet another musical.
“I wanted to play Scar not to sing songs in a kids’ movie, but I wanted to play Scar the character,” he tells us. “The characters get me going. Barry Jenkins gets me going – the directors, characters, and writers make me excited. And then if they are, they’re the ones that are interested in music all the time.” He laughs, “They’re the crazy ones.”
Harrison Jr. adds, “I’m not really calling my agents and saying, ‘Find me a musical movie,'” I’m really actually saying, ‘Please don’t.’ I think what happens is they all served different things that I was interested in. If you think about The High Note, I was like, ‘I really want to do a rom-com.’ With Cyrano, I really wanted to do a musical, yes, but more so because it’s kind of epic. I really wanted to work with Joe Wright, and I wanted to be in a picture that looked like that, and I wanted to work with Peter Dinklage. These are the reasons I really do something like that. And then you think about Chevalier; it’s like I did it for Joseph’s personality and not for the music of it all.”
Little is known about Mufasa: The Lion King, but it will dive into the mythology of the iconic characters, which includes looking at Mufasa’s origin story.
Jenkins will continue with the photorealistic animation technology used in the first film and sees the returning Jeff Nathanson penning this script. Hans Zimmer, Pharrell, and Nicholas Britell are in charge of the film’s score and musical elements.
As of the time of writing, there’s no release date set for Barry Jenkins’ Lion King prequel.
