Barry Jenkins on why he made 'Mufasa' and how it changed him as a filmmaker

NEW YORK — Over the four years he’s spent working on “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Barry Jenkins estimates that he’s been asked why he wanted to make it at least 400 times.

The question of why Jenkins, the filmmaker of “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “The Underground Railroad,” would want to jump into the big-budget, photorealistic animated Disney world of lions and tigers has bedeviled much of a film world that reveres him.

Countless other directors had made leaps into CGI-heavy blockbuster-making before. But Jenkins’ decision was uniquely analyzed – perhaps because there’s no more heralded, or trusted, filmmaker today under the age of 50 than Jenkins.

“It just thought it was something I could not deny,” Jenkins says. “I had to do it.”

“Mufasa,” which opens in theaters Friday, brings together movie worlds that ordinarily stay very far apart. On the one hand, you have the Oscar-winning, 45-year-old director of some of the most luminous and lyrical films of the past decade. On the other, you have the intellectual property imperatives of today’s Hollywood. What happens when they collide?

The result in “Mufasa,” about the lion cub's orphaned upbringing set both before and after the events of Jon Favreau's 2019 remake of “The Lion King,” is an uncommonly textured and thoughtfully rendered spectacle that, Jenkins maintained in a recent interview, has more in common with “Moonlight” than you’d think. Made with virtual filmmaking tools, “Mufasa” essentially plopped one of the most groundbreaking filmmakers working today into an all-digital playground, with a budget more than a hundred times that of “Moonlight.”

Often in “Mufasa,” you can feel Jenkins’ sensibility warming and enhancing what can, in other less sensitively commanded films, feel soulless. With songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Mufasa” works as a big-movie entertainment and, even more surprisingly, as a Barry Jenkins film.

“My head was spinning when this started,” Jenkins says. “It actually reminded me of when I first got into filmmaking. This felt oddly enough very similar to that first experience. You can sort of run away from that newness and be intimidated by it, or you can embrace it, learn the things you don’t know and then start to bend it.”

It’s also an experience that has quite evidently changed Jenkins, exponentially expanding his filmmaking tool kit while opening his eyes to new ways of making movies. “It was almost like learning a new language,” Jenkins says of the process. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

AP: How many times have you been asked why you did this movie?

Jenkins: At least 400 times. But it came down to the spirit and the warmth of Jeff Nathanson’s script and also the spirit and the warmth I always found in the story. I came to “The Lion King” by babysitting my nephews way, way back in the 1990s. My sister was a single mom and I’d be at home watching with the kids. You’d put on different VHSs and “The Lion King” was always the one that stuck. I just thought: Wouldn’t it be interesting to, coming out of something like “The Underground Railroad” to step into this thing that’s so full of light?

AP: Had you been actively seeking something lighter after those projects?

JENKINS: Maybe warmer, lighter but still just as deep, just as spiritual. This idea of family legacy, of finding your place in the world, those are things that are very present in “Moonlight” and “The Underground Railroad.” If I was telling you, “I’m going to make this film about this kid who has this almost biblical experience involving water and a parent figure that he then gets displaced from, and has to find his place in the world, I could be talking about “Moonlight” or I could be talking about “Mufasa.”

AP: Were you motivated by expanding yourself as a filmmaker? Or the notions people have of you as a filmmaker?

JENKINS: It wasn’t about the notions of who people thought I was. But I was looking to expand just the kind of filmmaking I was doing at that point. This came right in the thick of pretty much a seven-year cycle, from beginning “Moonlight” to being in post on “The Underground Railroad,” the way this movie is made, with this virtual production, it’s just a very new way of making films. There’s maybe been five or six movies made with this technology.

AP: Did you find you could carry your sensibility into virtual filmmaking?

JENKINS: I did. We evolved this process to the point where we could create so much of all the world and the movement in virtual space, and we could then take our virtual cameras into virtual production. We evolved the animation to the point where we could create the light, we could create the set, we could create the environment. (Cinematographer) James (Laxton) would be there and I would be there, and we’re blasting the voices of the actors into the room and the animators are moving through and I’m directing the blocking, and the camera is responding to the blocking in real time.

AP: It seemed like you were putting particular emphasis on close-ups. In the virtual space, were you playing with where to put the camera?

JENKINS: Absolutely. Look, I’m a filmmaker who was on set with “Moonlight,” I’ve got 25 days and the sun is going down. Yeah, you’re trying to find a place for the camera, you have ideas, but those ideas aren’t practically achievable. In this sense, the camera could be anywhere. It could be everywhere. It’s sort of the same questions but the possibility of answering is so immediate and direct.

AP: You recently told Vulture, though, that the digital process was “not your thing." Are you eager to return to physical filmmaking?

JENKINS: I want to unpack what you just said. We’ve been talking, and I’ve been talking about using these tools to create a very physical, in-person experience. I don’t consider this a project that’s all digital and all computer animated. If I made this movie again right now, it wouldn’t take me four years. It’d probably take me two and a quarter. If I was going to do another one of these films, I would have such a stronger foundation. It wouldn’t feel like something that’s alien or something that’s other or that’s all digital. It would just feel like filmmaking.

AP: So you see “Mufasa” more as part of a continuum for you personally?

JENKINS: One thousand percent. I love through this process I’ve learned so many other ways of making a film that I just could not learn making something like “The Underground Railroad.” What I love now is the overlap between the two of them. When I began this process, I talked to Matt Reeves because I had heard he had used some of these tools to pre-vis “The Batman.” He said, “Do you know that shot where the Penguin is in his car and Batman is walking upside down? I discovered that in the volume.” I said, “Of course you did.” I was like, Oh my God, we could have pre-vised “Moonlight” with this technology.

AP: Do you think it’s necessary for a filmmaker today to be aware of these techniques?

JENKINS: One thousand percent. The light can be anywhere in this film and the camera can be anywhere. That doesn’t mean it should be everywhere. The next time I go out to make a film whether it’s something like “The Underground Railroad” or “Beale Street,” James and I are probably going to incorporate these tools as well. Because figuring out the light is half the battle, as they say in “G.I. Joe.”

AP: So do you feel changed as a filmmaker by this experience?

JENKINS: This is all new. It’s all being developed right now. We went down to “Avatar” and spoke to the engineers there. They heard what we were trying to do and sent some people to embed with us and they helped us evolve our process, so we could have these animators with two legs move as if they have four legs. What I’m saying is: This is the wild, wild West.