With the live-action remake of the Lion King in the cinemas, Disney has once again been accused of stealing the idea for the plot and the scenes from Kimba the White Lion.
Osamu Tezuka’s Kimba the White Lion was written in 1950 and brought to animated life in 1965. Lion King, on the other hand, aired in 1994.
Ever since the original Lion King was released, critics have been adding to the controversy saying that Disney stole the old Japanese story after their copyrights request got denied.
While the two movies follow different screenplays, the resemblances are too evident to be a coincidence. From the plot to the characters to the iconic scenes, it appears as if Disney copied nearly everything from the Japanese success story.
One of the critics, YouTuber Alli Kat, pointed these differences out in a video with side-by-side screenshots from the two movies.
“I can say there is absolutely no inspiration from Kimba,” the Lion King animator, Tom Sito, said in an interview with the HuffPost Entertainment.
“I mean, the artists working on the film, if they grew up in the ‘60s, they probably saw Kimba. I mean, I watched Kimba when I was a kid in the ‘60s, and I think in the recesses of my memory, we’re aware of it but I don’t think anybody consciously thought, ‘Let’s rip off Kimba.’”
“Frankly, I’m not familiar with Kimba,” Rob Minkoff, The Lion King co-director, told the Los Angeles Times.point 229 |
Soon after his controversial statement, however, he was slammed, as critics found out he must have known everything about it because he had been living in Tokyo and had been engaged in the animation industry in the 1980s when Kimba’s remake aired in Japan.point 215 | 1
Speaking of the potential copyright infringement, law professor Madhavi Sunder claimed that closely matching scenes suggest the “highest level of evidence of copying.” As he added, Tezuka productions could build a “very strong” case against Disney if they decided to pursue legal action.
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