It’s a strange time for the movie studios that defined the identity of Hollywood.  We know them as the Big 5; Warner Brothers Discovery, NBC Universal, Sony, Disney, and of course Paramount.  For the longest time, it was known as the Big 6, but the studio previously known as 20th Century Fox ceased to be independent after a merger with the Walt Disney Company that finalized in 2019.  It’s fate was one of the most revealing signs of an industry that was in flux and about to change forever.  The rise of streaming caused a disruption in the normal business model that Hollywood had been running over the last half century.  With the studios wanting to get in on the lucrative new distribution model, they went through a busy period of content consolidation, cementing stronger holds on the properties that they had acquired over the years.  This also led to several mega mergers like the Disney and Fox one, where combined catalogs of movies and shows would help boost the content library for these new streamers.  However, this streaming arms race led to several financial problems down the road.  Hard cuts have had to be made to these newly expanded studios like Disney/Fox and Warner Brothers Discovery, but no studio had a more dire outlook in these latter days of the streaming wars than Paramount Pictures.  Paramount, the last remaining studio actually located in Hollywood itself, was facing some economic shortfalls this year that forced it’s parent company, National Amusements, to pursue a sale.  The industry was watching this development closely, because depending on who ended up owning Paramount in the end could either signal a new era for the century old studio, or be a sign of the end of yet another storied brand within Hollywood.  History is important to the identity of Hollywood, but this is also a business that sometimes can steamroll over the past in the name of progress.

Throughout Paramount’s history, it has seen the studio pass through many different hands, but all the while it has still remained one of Hollywood’s most legendary studios.  Founded in 1914 by Adolph Zukor, it is the second oldest studio in Hollywood still running today after Universal Pictures.  Funny enough, Paramount started it’s history off with a merger between Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company and producer Jesse L. Lasky’s Feature Play Company.  They began to make silent pictures out of a small barn on what is now Sunset and Vine in Hollywood, giving their directorial duties to an inexperienced stage manager at the time named Cecil B. DeMille.  The barn still survives today, though it has been moved to Highland Avenue across from the Hollywood Bowl and is now the Hollywood Heritage Museum.  In the 20’s, they used the profits from their movies to establish a larger facility located on Melrose Boulevard and that’s been their home ever since.  In 1927, Paramount adopted it’s now iconic logo of a mountain top ringed by an arch of 22 stars.  The meaning behind the stars has been lost to time, but the logo has remained fairly unchanged in almost 100 years; merely upgraded graphically with the advancements in filmmaking over time.   At Paramount, the key to their success were it’s stars, and they were the home to all the silent greats like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Rudolph Valentino to name a few.  In the meantime, Paramount was also growing itself into one of the titans of exhibition as well, being the owners of numerous movie theaters across the country.  Unfortunately for them, their rapid growth in the exhibition side of the business would back and bite them, and the result would change Hollywood forever.

Paramount created a practice called “block booking” which made it so that any theater that wanted to screen a film starring one particular star would also have to buy a year’s worth of other Paramount movies.  Paramount wasn’t alone in this practice in Hollywood, but they were the most prolific studio owned theatrical distributor too, which gave them close to a monopoly in the business.  This practice of “block booking” made it impossible for independent theater owners to rise up in the business because it limited the amount of movies that would have been available to screen.  So, anti-trust lawsuits were filed, which were argued all the way up to the Supreme Court.  This led to the landmark United States v. Paramount Pictures decision of 1950, which effectively broke up the movie studios ownership of movie theaters and brought an end to the movie studio system as we knew it up to that point.  All of the studios in Hollywood were effected, but none more so than Paramount.  It lost a significant share of it’s yearly income after being forced to sell off it’s theatrical division, and it spent much of the 1950’s and 60’s struggling to regain it’s past glory.  Meanwhile, a corporate manufacturing conglomerate named Gulf+Western was beginning to pivot into the entertainment business.  They acquired two major Hollywood players in 1966, one was the television studio Desilu Pictures and the other was of course Paramount.  The combination of the two would prove fortuitous because Desilu happened to be the rights holders of a popular shows like  Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, two brands that would over time become some of the most valuable franchises under the Paramount umbrella.  Under Gulf+Western, Paramount would see a revival in the 1970’s, especially under the supervision of their new head of production, a young executive named Robert Evans, who would be a hit making machine, greenlighting beloved classics like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Love Story (1970), Chinatown (1974) and The Godfather Parts I and II (1972, 1974) during his tenure.

The success continued through the 80’s and 90’s, and Paramount would also become the starting off point for some of the biggest power players in the industry.  Both Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg would capitalize on the success of their launch of the Indiana Jones franchise at Paramount by jumping over to the leadership at Disney.  Paramount also became the original home of the mega successful producer team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and they would deliver a huge hit for Paramount with the Tom Cruise led Top Gun (1986).  Cruise himself would also set up shop as a producer within Paramount, working almost exclusively with the studio for most of his career.  But, a pivotal moment came in 1993 when billionaire Sumner Redstone’s media conglomerate Viacom decided to add Paramount to it’s portfolio.  In a deal worth $9 billion at the time, Redstone’s National Amusements, the parent company of Viacom, became the primary shareholder of Paramount Pictures and all of it’s properties.  A few short years later, Viacom would also acquire the television network CBS, which now put all three Big 3 TV networks now under the control of movie studios (NBC and ABC were already owned by Universal and Disney respectively).  With the combination of it’s movie library, it’s valuable franchises from the old Desilu studio, and now a whole TV network under one roof, Viacom built Paramount into one of the most powerful studios in Hollywood.  Viacom would continue to expand into the cable television market, acquiring channels like Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon.  As time went on, Viacom was looking to take it’s vast library of movies and shows and use it to make a foothold in the new streaming market.  Initially, they tried to make their launch under the CBS name, calling their platform CBS All Access.  It became clear that this wasn’t a strong enough brand to make a difference in the face of competition with HBO Max and Disney+.  So, Viacom decided to undergo a whole rebrand with the Paramount name being their flagship.  CBS All Access would become Paramount+ and Viacom would be renamed Paramount Global.

With over a hundred years of experience in Hollywood, you would imagine that the Paramount name would help bring fortune to this new era of streaming.  But even though they had some modest success, mainly helped by showrunner Taylor Sheridan and his hugely popular drama Yellowstone, Paramount+ has fallen well short of expectations.  Like much of the other studios in Hollywood who jumped on board the streaming craze, Paramount is learning the hard lesson that streaming wasn’t going to be the bottomless well of fortune that they all thought it would be.  For Paramount, their lack of growth in streaming combined with the enormous amount of debt they acquired in order to grow and acquire assets over the years, suddenly put them in a bind they haven’t experienced in a long while.  This all came to a head this year, as Shari Redstone, the CEO of National Amusements after the death of her father Sumner in 2020, was looking to offload the company and it’s assets.  This led to a lot of worries within the industry as to what would happen to the legendary studio.  Would it be swallowed up by another studio like Fox had under Disney.  Or would it be bought by a Wall Street backed corporate raider who would break it up and sell off the scraps of what the studio once was, effectively killing it completely.  It all depended on who would meet Shari’s asking price.  The bidding war itself became a bit of a fiasco, as what looked like done deals quickly fell apart as agreements would change seemingly every day.  All the while, Paramount Global’s stock value sank to it’s lowest mark ever, being traded at only a fraction of what it’s competitors Warner Brothers and Disney were trading at.  Thankfully, powerful indie producer Skydance Media, which has had a long history working in collaboration with Paramount, including being a part of the most recent Star Trek and Mission: Impossible films, offered a merger deal with Paramount Global valued at $8 billion.  Skydance CEO David Ellison would effectively become the head of Paramount under this new agreement and National Amusements would no longer have the controlling interest in the studio moving forward, ending their 30 year control over the studio.  For Shari Redstone, and most of the industry, this is the most ideal outcome as it keeps the studio as we know it intact, securing Sumner Redstone’s legacy as the head of the company, and prevents it’s assets from being sold off separately.

While it looks like Paramount is getting a happyish ending out of this, their struggle is still very much a clear example of how fragile legacies can be in Hollywood.  For a lot of Hollywood’s history, we’ve seen many film companies come and go, and when one ceases to exist, their library of titles suddenly hang in limbo.  If this were to happen to one of the remaining Big 5 studios, it would have a profound ripple effect across the industry.  With Paramount spending a few months of uncertainty during the bidding war, it made a lot of people worried that we were in fact seeing the last days of this storied studio.  At one point, Sony expressed interest in acquiring Paramount, which would reduce the number of big studios down to just 4.  Another merger on the level of what we saw with Disney and Fox would have been devastating for Hollywood as it would have put a whole lot of people out of work due to redundancies.  And then there was the possibility of the studio being dismantled in a fire sale of sorts, splitting all the different properties of Paramount apart and selling them to interested parties all across the business, making the former Paramount brand itself worthless.  This is something not uncommon in Hollywood.  Other once powerful studios like RKO were dismantled over the years and sold off in pieces to other studios.  These kinds of things happen in Hollywood usually due to movie productions that go way over budget, to the point where no amount of box office success will save them.  United Artists, the studio formed by the combined forces of former Paramount contracted stars Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplain, was once a powerful force in Hollywood and even made huge profits off of their American distribution of the James Bond franchise.  Then came the disaster that was Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), a box office bomb so costly that it put United Artists into bankruptcy.  They were eventually acquired by MGM, which itself fell into hard times and today is now owned by Amazon.  Smaller companies fare even worse as they lose control over their libraries of films, and those that can’t find a home in another studio end up getting lost in vaults over time and forgotten to the world.

So what does the Skydance and Paramount merger mean.  It’s still uncertain, as the deal won’t close until 2025.  But what likely will happen, as is the case with most mergers, is that there will be layoffs in both companies.  Paramount may need to offload some of it’s assets in order to meet Skydance’s offer price.  In the entirety of the Viacom era, Paramount saw massive expansion that saw their assets grow to a point where it may be too big to manage.  In all likelihood, where Paramount may make their cuts is in the struggling cable division, as streaming has become a bigger concern of theirs.  There are already interested parties who want the BET Network, so that is likely going to be one of the channels that will leave the Paramount portfolio.  Speaking of streaming, there is talk of Paramount+ either being completely overhauled, sun-setted, or merged with another streamer, as it currently is one of the key contributors leading to Paramount’s dire financial situation.   There’s talk of Paramount+ combining with Warner Brother’s MAX in what would likely be one of the biggest mergers yet to come in the streaming market, which itself will affect the industry as a whole.  But whatever move it makes, the goal is to preserve Paramount’s history as best it can be saved.  That was what Shari Redstone was so adamant about.  Her father built the company up over 30 years and she didn’t want that legacy to disappear.  Unfortunately, the nature of the business is not kind to legacy.  Shareholders were likely not happy with the prolonged and ever-changing process it took to reach a deal.  Some shareholders likely would’ve been happier if Shari Redstone had just started selling off the assets of the studio for short term profits.  Hollywood is first and foremost a business, and what it takes to make a studio like Paramount run is the confidence in investors that the company can continue to make money.  Too much effort put into preserving the past can make investors warry because they are more concerned about the future, and that’s what makes it so hard for studios to maintain their stature over time.  There’s no room for sentimental attachments in Hollywood.

One good thing about the Skydance/ Paramount merger is that it will give Paramount the chance to maintain it’s identity into the future.  And one of the biggest things that will remain as part of the company is the legendary studio lot itself.  Remaining in it’s same footprint over nearly 100 years, and the only studio to stay in Hollywood after all the others moved to the San Fernando Valley or Culver City, the Paramount Studio lot is a living monument to the history of cinema.  Walking under those iconic white arches you know that you are walking in the footsteps of giants, seeing soundstages where classics like Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Ten Commandments (1956), The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Forrest Gump (1994), and many more were filmed.  Even today it’s a bustling, alive studio lot, with recent hits like Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) keeping Paramount well positioned amongst the Big 5 studios.  Hopefully under new management with Skydance we’ll see a renewed energy at the studio that will help it survive for many more years as it currently is.  It’s just unfortunate that so much drama had to occur during the process of the company changing hands.  Paramount, for it’s whole history has had to overcome a lot of hurdles.  After being crippled by the dissolution of the studio system with the Paramount Decision by the Supreme Court, they managed to bounce back thanks to their pursuit of making quality entertainment.  They helped to revitalize old properties like Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and Transformers and turn them into billion dollar franchises.  They helped to take CBS from last place in network ratings to first place with well targeted programming like CSI and NCIS for the older crowd and The Big Bang Theory for the younger crowd.  Time will tell how Paramount+ will fare, but hopefully it doesn’t sink the future of this long time studio.  Both literally and figuratively, Paramount is Hollywood.  It’s a living reminder of what the industry has stood for, and hopefully the sun doesn’t set on the other side of it’s lofty mountaintop.

A lot of work goes into the making of a film.  A lot of money too.  And by the time it has reached the public, the hope is that audiences will not only enjoy what they see, but will want to see it again and again.  The life cycle of a movie is an interesting one to observe.  For the longest time the way a movie exists out in the world is that it first is experienced in a movie theater with a crowd of other people.  Then if the person in the audience felt a real connection with the film, then they may end up purchasing it, either as a physical copy or as a digital download online, after the film has ended it’s theatrical run.  The final stage for a movie afterwards is the licensing of the film to outlets likes television or streaming where the movie can be available to watch for the casual watcher to enjoy again or even discover for the first time.  There are even the movies that go full circle and end up getting theatrical releases again, for anniversaries or as part of a selection of titles for a festival presentation.  But it should be noted that only a select few films ever make it to this stage in their life cycle.  Sure, you would think that once a movie is made it should exist for all time.  But this sadly is not the case.  Film is a bit more finite than many of us realize and in a world that is dependent far more on digital media, we are actually seeing an acceleration of movies that fall through the cracks and are lost to time.  There are many reasons this happens, but one of the primary factors is the fact that film preservation is a costly and time consuming procedure, and the industry is just not as concerned about investing in the past.  But there is a lot of films from the past that are absolutely worth saving, even if they aren’t all classics.  It’s important because every film made, bad or good, is a record of cinematic history and that’s worth preserving.

The biggest problem that affects most films, particularly old ones, is the way that time deteriorates our physical media.  Film stock in particular is especially volatile and requires special attention.  This is especially true with older movies, some of which were filmed on highly flammable nitrate film stock.  It is said that up to 80% or more films from the silent movie era are completely lost, and of the 20% that do survive, they may be fragmented due to parts being damaged beyond repair.  That is the nature of cinematic history, that the industry wasn’t really thinking about long term preservation of their work, because it was all about getting the movies made and out into the theaters.  As we look at film preservation today, the best that we can do to recreate the way an old movie looked in it’s original state is to have a digital scan of the original camera negative, and sadly, this is the thing that ends up deteriorating first.  To compensate, the next best option is to work from a print (and the older the better).  A pristine film print is helpful, but it also is not the best quality source either, because the duplication process used to create a print from the camera negative results in a downgrade in the image, and the results are worse if you end up making a copy from something that is already a copy.  And then comes the clean-up in film restoration, which itself is time consuming and costly, which is why only the films that are deemed worthy of preservation manage to get saved.  Basically, what we know about our film history is formed around what has managed to survive all these years.  And there are several factors that can still come into play with regards to what survives.  Films have been lost forever due to fires, floods, willful destruction, and just plain old apathy.  It’s a truth about all art in general as well, as great works of literature, sculpture and illustration all have to endure the flow of time, which isn’t very forgiving to physical works.

But, certainly with the limitless ability to store data in a digital realm, works of art such as film should be able to last forever, and defy the ravages of time that have caused so many works to be lost.  Even here there are some worries.  One, even though data is not finite it still is not indestructible.  Movies that are preserved as a digital master must exist somewhere, and that somewhere is on servers computing for the digital space you are accessing the movie from.  At this point, you are dependent on that digital platform for keeping the film in their library, and this is not always a guarantee.  Streaming has changed the game quite a bit when it comes to gaining access to a movie.  In some ways, it has helped to increase exposure for a lot of movies that otherwise might have been forgotten, as streaming is dependent on having deep libraries of content to entice subscribers to join.  But, with the movie studios being far more protective of their IP, this also has led to a decrease of the flow of movies across platforms that used to define the streaming market.  When it was just Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, the studios would be paid handsomely for the license to air their movies, much like how it worked on airing for television.  This would help to give more movies a longer lifespan outside of theaters, especially if there were long-term agreements set up for airings before a movie’s initial release.  But, the consolidation of IP into each studios’ in house streaming service is having the effect of a lot of these pre-release agreements not materializing anymore, and from that point it is left up to the studios to decide what they want to do with their movies.  You might think that it benefits movies to have a secure home on a streaming platform, but that really isn’t the case as the studios are also neglectful of even their own movies.

One of the biggest problems with the consolidation of IP for the purpose of streaming is that it takes the ownership away from the consumer.  Without the licensing model being put in place, movies are locked away within the vaults of the studios more strictly, and they ultimately determine what we are going to see.  Take the example of Disney, and their Disney+ streaming service.  Sure, you have easy access to all the familiar films that we know from the studio, with the big pillars of Disney Animation, Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel being the brands easily browsed on the service.  But, sadly, Disney is putting the value in their marquee titles and not on the deeper reaches of their catalog.  One thing that especially feels underutilized on their service is the library of films they acquired from their merger with 20th Century Fox.  A whole studio’s worth of movies and television shows that spans nearly a century, and only a small handful of their classics are found on Disney+, like The Sound of Music (1965).  Sure the further integration of Hulu onto the Disney+ platform is helping to expand the roster of Fox films on the service a little, but there are still literally hundreds of movies that are out of the public view because Disney is not fully integrating the Fox library onto streaming.  The same kind of limited library access is also affecting the other studio streamers as well, with platforms like Max and Paramount+ being very selective about what is available to watch on their platform.  These streamers are also governed by algorithms that determine what should be pushed towards their audience attention, which could also lead to a decrease in exposure for some movies.  There certainly are some benefits to be sure for streaming, especially with studios beefing up their investment in new digital masters for all their titles on there, including new restorations.  But, even with the vastness of potential on digital platforms, some movies are going to be lost.

And then there’s also the more insidious action taken by the studios to remove movies and shows from their platforms entirely.  We saw not too long ago where studios like Warner Brothers and Disney were removing content from their platforms purely in order to collect a tax write-off.  That means that these movies, many of which were exclusive to the streamers, just cease to exist.  Tax write offs only work if the studio promises to never profit off their removed content ever again.  That means they will never reappear on the streaming platform, nor be available to purchase anywhere else.  And it’s not just small films or shows that are getting this treatment.  Disney removed their expensive TV spin-off of the movie Willow (1988) and if you missed it the first time you are out of luck as the show was yanked for a tax write off.  On Max, Warner Brothers pulled the Doug Liman directed pandemic movie Locked Down (2021) which starred Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor for the same purpose, and I’m sure none of those A-Listers would ever have thought that one of the films on their resume would just cease to exist.  It’s a disturbing trend that movies and shows can just so easily be thrown away and kept from viewing eyes.  It really upends the life cycle of a movie, which for many movies still allowed audiences a longer time to discover a film as it went from theaters to home entertainment.  Locked Down didn’t even get a full year.  But, some people still feel that their access to movies are safe if they bought them through a digital retailer.  That unfortunately was challenged during a recent merger between two Japanese anime streaming providers.  Crunchyroll and Funimation were the leading online retailers of anime content, and late last year, they began the move to merge into one single platform.  Unfortunately, it was decided by Crunchyroll that none of the previous catalog purchases on Funimation’s site would carry over in the merger.  That means that people who paid to buy a digital copy of the movies on the Funimation website would no longer have ownership of their movies.  Understandably, people were upset that their purchases were basically voided out so that Crunchyroll could generate their revenue purely through subscription.  While this is not a widespread case in the industry yet, it could still easily happen elsewhere.  Sadly, the streamers have too much say in what is considered ownership of a film.

That’s why so many cinema fans out there are feeling more impassioned to put their money towards physical media.  When you own a physical copy of a film, it is yours to watch forever.  But sadly, with streaming still dominating the minds of studio executives at the moment, it is leading to a decline of the once prosperous home video market.  Disney earlier this year completely shuttered their own in-house physical media distribution wing and are now outsourcing their future releases to Sony instead.  We’ll still see some Disney movies released on physical media, but it may be determined solely on what they deem worthy.  In truth, far fewer movies are going to be released on physical media in the future; a privilege given to just a chosen few.  Other small movies may just only be lucky to get a special release from a third party publisher like Shout Factory or Criterion, but only if they somehow maintain exposure in the public eye.  Like so many works of art throughout the years a lot of movies may not survive this new world of home entertainment.  The studios iron grip on what gets put onto their platforms coupled with the decline of physical media production as well as the threat of streamers not honoring the ownership of past purchases all creates a great worry that we are going to see an acceleration of lost media in our lifetimes.  And that creates a lot of anxiety for cinephiles who worry that a huge chunk of our cinematic history could fade into oblivion.  Cinema may be only a bit more than a century old as an artform, but it has also become a crucial part of our heritage as a global community.  We let a big chunk of it fade into obscurity, or worse get deleted from the world based on the whims of the studios, we lose a bit of ourselves in the process.

So, what can be done.  We as individual collectors certainly can’t save every film; we don’t have the shelf space nor the money to make that happen.  What I have found to be a good way of preserving what we can of film history is to diversify our personal collections.  I for one make an effort to have all of my movies in both physical and digital form.  Most physical movies on the market from first parties do include a redemption code for a digital copy of the movie.  While not all of the studios allow you to redeem from all digital retailers (Paramount and Lionsgate are notorious for this), the codes are good pretty much anywhere digital movies are sold.  What I recommend is setting up an account with Movies Anywhere.  On this particular service, they do allow you to purchase off of their platform, but they are also valuable as a service that links your account with them to most of the other digital retailers.  By redeeming your code through them, your digital copy will be available to watch on iTunes, Fandango at Home (formerly VUDU), Google Play and Amazon.  Having accounts synced up like this ensures that your movie will be available to watch across multiple platforms, and that will help to safeguard your access to that movie in case one of those retailers decides to cut the film out of their library.  Back-ups are the key to helping keep a movie available to watch.  Physical media is the preferred format to watch a film, since you’re movie is being sourced locally from the disc itself and not through the internet.  But, physical media does deteriorate over time, so upgrading to better formats are ideal if it’s affordable and available.  I’ve gone through multiple purchases of the same films many times, from DVD to Blu-ray to 4K UHD, but if you only need that one time purchase, make sure to take good care of your films.  Safeguarding your movies in their original packaging is ideal, and make sure you avoid scratches and environmental dangers like extreme heat when the movie is outside of it’s package.  Downloading your movies and storing them in multiple Hard Drive back-ups can also ensure you have a movie preserved.  You may not help every movie survive, but if enough diligent collectors take the right steps, collectively we may all be able to safeguard enough movies to help most of them survive long term into the future.

I think a lot about how so much of our collective understanding about our culture is based what has managed to survive through the centuries.  I remember in my college English literature classes a lecture about the different tragedies that led to the destruction of key written works that gave a clearer picture of the times that they were written.  Think about what was lost in the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria, or the art that was sacked and mishandled during conflicts like the Crusades or the Mongol Invasions, or the Cotton Library Fire that destroyed many medieval manuscripts.  As my English professor made clear, out of all this historical chaos, it’s a miracle that something as ancient as Beowulf managed to survive into modern times and helps us to understand the role of literature of in the times of the Vikings.  The same goes for monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza, or the Parthenon in Athens.  What we know of our history comes from what has survived all these centuries.  We can only piece together from fragments in order to create an understanding of the whole.  While cinema is still a young art, it is nevertheless prone to the same destructive forces of time like the rest of what mankind has created.  Time has already taken it’s toll on some of our cinema history.  And the increasingly short-sighted moves made by studios to give them more control over what we are allowed to see is making it increasingly possible that we are going to lose a lot more.  We can do something about it.  Hold the studios accountable whenever they deem your purchases voided.  Make demands on what movies you want to see preserved.  Do what you can to diversify your library, especially when it comes to physical media.  An analog collection of movies may be prone to the ravages of time, but it also ensures that you have ownership of that movie, and it can’t be taken away by a studio.  Movies should have long lifespans after they are released, because not everyone gets to see a movie the first time around and there are many cases where it took years for a film to truly achieve classic status with it’s audience.  Movies ranging from It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) to The Iron Giant (1999) only became classics because they were given the chance to be discovered in other other mediums over a long period of time.  Now the are no longer cult hits, but rather mainstream masterpieces, and the current climate of short term success in the overcrowded streaming market would not let that happen.  The hope is that there are enough passionate movie lovers out there who will not allow for movies they love to fade away.  We owe it to ourselves to try all we can to help keep the movies immortal and last for generations to come.

In the annals of Disney Animation, and for all animation for that matter, no other film looms as large as The Lion King (1994).  The movie has become a global phenomenon that continues to be as widely popular now as it was when it first released 30 years ago.  In addition to conquering the box office, it has gone on to spawn numerous other properties that themselves become enormous hits on their own, such as tv spin-offs and an award winning Broadway show.  Even a “live action” remake from 2019 would go on to gross over a billion dollars on it’s own.  It seems like everything that this movie touches turns to gold, and it has been one of the primary engines of Disney’s success over the last quarter of a century.  But it may surprise you that Disney only viewed this movie as a major success after it was released in theaters.  Before that, it was viewed as the studio’s “B-Picture.”  The Lion King was developed in the middle of Disney Animation’s Renaissance period; a time when the studio was ramping up again in success after a long period of failure in the post-Walt Disney years.  The Little Mermaid (1989) is credited for kickstarting this new era and bringing Disney back to their former glory, and that success continued to build with Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992) soon after.  At this time, it seemed like the Disney formula of action adventure mixed with fairy tale magic was what was helping them win back audiences.  The Lion King on the other hand was a bit of an odd fit, so it progressed along under the radar of the Disney brass.  But to the surprise of everyone, the little “B-Picture” would be the movie that would transform the studio forever, both in good ways and in bad ways.  But how did this unexpected hit manage to take it’s place in the Circle of Life at Disney Animation.

In the late 1980’s, right before Ariel and friends would make their first splash on the big screen, the top brass at Disney Animation were brainstorming their next move at the studio.  Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were no-brainers of course, fitting with the fairy tale background that had worked for Disney in the past.  But Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg was interested in exploring an animated feature that was set in Africa.  This idea interested his colleagues, Roy Disney and Peter Schneider, and together they sought out ideas from the filmmakers at their studio.  Director George Scribner, who was just coming off of the minor success of their latest film, Oliver & Company (1988), managed to pitch a story idea that appealed to the executives called King of the Jungle.  The story revolved around a coming of age tale of a lion cub named Simba who is separated from his pride, raised by a family of baboons and does battle with an evil band of hyenas before eventually reuniting with his pride and becoming their king.  Katzenberg referred to it as “Bambi in Africa” as some of the coming-of-age elements were similar to the Walt era classic.  Scribner would refine the story more throughout the years after, adding in more Arthurian and Shakespearean elements to Simba’s story that gave it more gravitas.  But, unlike the other films being developed at Disney at the time, King of the Jungle was not intended to be a musical fairy tale.  It was very grounded in nature, treating the African setting as something more akin to a nature documentary.  After a year into development, the Disney team hired Roger Allers to assist Scribner with direction, hoping to give the story more focus as Allers had did as the Head of Story on Beauty and the Beast.  Allers would bring in his own of story artists, including Brenda Chapman and Chris Sanders, both of whom were rising stars at the studio.  The team worked on the story for a good 2 years, all the while Disney Animation was growing by leaps and bounds.  All of this new change at the studio would have a profound effect on the development of the film, and for a time, it was not moving the movie in the right direction.

Under George Scribner’s guidance, the story lacked an emotional core, and the executives at Disney were growing nervous.  Amidst the success of their mega hit animated musicals, King of the Jungle’s non-musical approach was just not working anymore.  There was worry that the movie would soon be scrapped completely, which prompted a lot of the top talent at Disney Animation to jump ship and join a more sure-fire project that was in development at the same time; an animated musical about the Native American icon, Pocahontas.  For most of the animators, Pocahontas was going to be the next Disney classic, while King of the Jungle was going to be the studio’s “B-Picture;” a minor film tossed through the production line like so many forgotten films of the post-Walt era.  To change the fate of the film, Roger Allers and his team decided to pitch a version of the story that was friendlier to musical numbers.  This did not sit well with George Scribner, who soon left the project entirely.  The movie had lost it’s original director, but was on track to becoming something better.  The title was changed to The Lion King, which was welcome because King of the Jungle made no sense for a movie where there is no jungle.  Producer Don Hahn, an enormously successful talent at the studio who helped to shepherd Beauty and the Beast to it’s success was brought on board to guide this new direction for the The Lion King, and soon after animator Rob Minkoff was promoted to director to take Scribner’s place.  For the team that stayed with The Lion King, being on board this “B-Picture” became something of a badge of honor.  They were now the underdogs, and just like with most underdog stories the ability to overcome the odds stacked against them helped to drive their belief that they could make something really special.

The story definitely became more Shakespearean in tone over time, becoming less like Bambi and more like Hamlet.  Simba would be betrayed by his uncle Scar, witness the murder of his father Mufasa, and live in exile until he reached adulthood where he would challenge his usurping uncle for the throne.  The direction of the movie would also visually take inspiration from great Hollywood epics from filmmakers like David Lean and Cecil B. DeMille, helping it to feel grander and more in line with the true vastness of the open Serengeti where the movie is set.  Producer Don Hahn stated that there were three pillars in particular that define the movie above all else and helped to make it the masterpiece that we all know; three sequences in fact.  One is the opening scene that introduces us to the world of this story; second is the wildebeest stampede scene that the story pivots on; and the third is the most magical scene in the movie where Simba confronts his father’s spirit, speaking to him from the great beyond.  Each of these moments are what sets the movie apart from all the other Disney films, and each was groundbreaking in their own right.  The wildebeest stampede for example took the still primitive tool of CGI animation to the next level, creating an epic scale sequence that would’ve been impossible to pull off only a few years before.  It was a bold sequence to pull of visually, but it also needed to land with the audience emotionally.  Simba’s father, Mufasa, the great Lion King, is murdered by his treacherous brother Scar and young Simba is given his first brush with death.  The sequence recalls a similar scene with Bambi after he loses his mother; but this time, Disney chose to not shy away from confronting death.  Bambi’s mom is killed off screen and we never see her again.  In The Lion King, Simba finds Mufasa’s lifeless body and grieves over it.  It’s an emotional sequence, beautifully animated, that was key towards helping The Lion King feel more momentous than the average Disney animated flick.

The next big factor in The Lion King’s success of course was the music.  No other Disney film sounded like Lion King, with it’s sweeping score infused with authentic African melodies and instrumentation.  Hans Zimmer, an acclaimed composer of note in Hollywood, was brought on board to score his first animated feature.  His work was a welcome departure from the work of Alan Menken, who had successfully scored most of the Disney Renaissance movies.  Menken’s work is brilliant, but his melodies would have been out of place in this African set story; plus he was already deep into working on Aladdin and Pocahontas during that time, making him unavailable.  Zimmer was a much better match, given that he had been working African influence into a number of his film scores before Lion King, including one particularly influential film called The Power of One (1992).  On that film, Zimmer collaborated with a South African musician named Lebo M who he wanted to work with again on Lion King.  Lebo M would prove instrumental in helping to shape the authentic African sound of the score; helping to find the right collection of musicians and instruments, as well as coaching the choirs whose voices would become key parts of the overall score.  Lebo even can be heard in the film itself as the very first voice we hear, with his iconic “Naaaaaaah” sung over a rising sun in the opening shot.  The songs would also need to be special as well.  Lyricist Tim Rice was brought on board at Disney to help complete the song score for Aladdin after the tragic passing of Howard Ashman.  He then moved over to working on The Lion King, and he proposed the bold idea of getting Elton John to write the melodies for the songs in the film.  No one believed that a pop star of Elton’s stature would want to work on a Disney animated musical, but to everyone’s surprise, he said yes.  In total, Elton John  and Tim Rice wrote five original songs for the film; the upbeat “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” the traditional villain song “Be Prepared,” the silly comical song, “Hakuna Matata,” and the pop friendly love ballad “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” among them.  But, if there was one song that mattered more than the others, it was the one that opens the movie, “Circle of Life.”  One of the pillars that the movie rested on, there has never been a grander opening number found in any animated film before or since.  It was the perfect tone setter, a magnificent showpiece for this ambitious epic, and it probably stands second to “When You Wish Upon a Star” in the pantheon of monumental Disney tunes.

The third pillar that mattered to the film is the climatic moment where Simba must confront his past and take his place as king; a responsibility he had been running away from.  The message becomes clear to him after he sees the image of his father reaching out to him from the heavens.  If there is one sequence that defines the movie above all else, it’s this moment.  The image of Mufasa silhouetted in the sky by storm clouds, creating this heavenly visage, is a work of pure art that stands among the best at Disney; especially in the Renaissance era.  Apart from the stunning animation, it also mattered who got to speak for the character of Mufasa, because he demanded a voice of authority.  Luckily, Disney was able to cast the iconic voice of James Earl Jones in the part.  No stranger to voice over roles, Jones brings such a dignified presence to the character Mufasa; very much embodying the identity of a Lion King.  To bounce off of the power of James Earl Jones’ powerful voice, Disney perfectly cast actor Jeremy Irons in the scheming, slimy role of the villainous Scar, who provided the perfect counter to Jones’ performance.  A duo of teen heartthrobs from different eras, Matthew Broderick and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, were cast in the role of Simba at different ages in his life, and both managed to give Simba the right amount of boyish charm while at the same time giving him the right amount of emotional pathos in the heavier moments of the movie.  Thomas’ performance in the death scene of Mufasa really feels authentically heartbreaking, and Broderick likewise gives a powerful turn during the pivotal conversation with Mufasa’s spirit.  The rest of the cast is also filled with perfectly matched voices.  Broadway vets Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella were auditioning for roles as wisecracking hyenas, but the filmmakers realized they worked so well as a team that they instead got cast as Simba’s comical sidekicks, Timon the Meercat and Pumbaa the Warthog, both of which they were perfectly matched for.  And for the key role of the wise baboon shaman Rafiki, Disney cast legendary TV and stage actor Robert Guillaume, who really helped to ground the film with a dignified African sensibility.

Visually, musically and vocally, The Lion King had everything going for it by the end of it’s production.  Even the Disney execs were realizing that their “B-Picture” may be more special than they first thought.  But there were still some uncertain factors still in play.  One, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake that struck the Los Angeles area disrupted the workflow of the animation studio, so a lot of the animators had to bring their work home in order to get the movie done on time.  An eleventh hour change was also made to the “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” sequence after Elton John became upset that his love song was being sung by the characters Timon and Pumbaa, butchering what he had intended for the lovely ballad.  But probably what was most disruptive to the closing days of Lion King’s production was the simultaneous implosion of the Disney corporate level team.  CEO Michael Eisner had lost his right hand man, CFO Frank Wells, in a tragic helicopter crash, and had slighted Jeffrey Katzenberg who was seeking to fill that spot at the Disney company, making him the next in the line of succession at the company.  Eisner and Katzenberg’s relationship, which had always been contentious before, became un-reparable after that and just days before The Lion King was to premiere in the Summer, Katzenberg parted ways with Disney, leaving a major vacancy at Disney Animation.  Though the behind the scenes drama didn’t affect The Lion King at the box office too much, it did spell the beginning of the end of this monumental era known as the Disney Renaissance.  Despite all that, The Lion King not only started strong after it’s premiere on June 24, 1994, it would go on to break every record in the books that year for an animated feature.  By the end of it’s run, it was the then 3rd all time top grossing movie domestically at that time, right behind Jurassic Park (1993) and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).  It would also collect two Academy Awards that year; Hans Zimmer for his score (his first) and one to Elton John and Tim Rice for the song  “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”  But the legacy of The Lion King wouldn’t stop there.  A couple years later, Disney tasked Avant Garde stage director Julie Taymor with adapting Lion King for Broadway.  The result was another smash hit that won the Tony for Best New Musical and continues to be performed on the Great White Way to this day, over 25 years later.

The success of The Lion King would still be a double edged sword for Disney despite all the great fortune it has brought them.  In a way it became too popular, raising the bar too high for Disney to match or even surpass in the years after.  It’s ironic that the movie that the top Disney talent thought was going to be the superior film, Pocahontas, ended up underperforming the following year in 1995.  To critics and audiences, Pocahontas just didn’t wow them in the same way that The Lion King did.  There would be a steady decline of Disney Animation in the years after Lion King, with some modest hits here and there like Mulan (1998) and Lilo and Stitch (2002).  Disney Animation would go through some drastic changes during this time as well, with Pixar Animation pushing the industry towards computer animation and also more competing animation studios outside of the Disney company also making their moves, including Jeffrey Katzenberg’s newly formed Dreamworks Animation.  The Lion King really was the crest of a wave that helped to revitalize a dying artform at Disney Animation and then inevitably also lead to it’s downfall again.  Even still, the film remains an all time classic and one of Disney’s crowning achievements.  It also proved to be a great launchpad for a rising crop of talent at the studio.  Rob Minkoff would later find success as a live action filmmaker, working on the blockbuster Stuart Little films for Sony.  Chris Sanders would become a successful animation director in his own right, making a big splash with Lilo and Sitich before heading over to Dreamworks where he would create hits like How to Train Your Dragon (2010), The Croods (2013) and the upcoming The Wild Robot (2024).  Brenda Chapman would make her way over to Pixar and create the first ever fairy tale adventure over there with Brave (2012).  That’s an incredible legacy for a team that were considered the underdogs at one time at Disney.  The Lion King has so many iconic moments that still have the power to amaze even 30 years later.  It’s not surprising that this was one of the films Disney selected for special IMAX presentations in the past, as the canvas for the film genuinely earns that enormous screen.  Eventually Disney Animation would find it’s footing again post-Renaissance with hits like Frozen (2013) and Zootopia (2016), as they always seem to do after down periods, but The Lion King still remains a high water mark for Disney.  Whether it’s the catchy songs, the unforgettable characters, the compelling story, or the majestic animation, there’s something for everyone in this movie that makes it special.  And the behind the scenes story of the movie defying the odds to become a reality is itself an inspirational tale.  As they say, “Hakuna Matata means no worries” and that belief in being true to yourself has helped this lion continue to roar all these years later.