Why Chiwetel Ejiofor Won’t Get To Sing ‘Be Prepared’ In The ‘Lion King’ Remake

As soon as it was announced that Beyoncé, Donald Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor will voice Nala, Simba and Scar in the upcoming live-action remake of The Lion King, it immediately shot to the top of everyone’s ‘most anticipated movies’ list.

But while the cast of Jon Favreau’s remake is pretty much unimpeachable, fans are not too pleased about reports that most of the original movie’s songs will not be making the cut — especially the iconic “Be Prepared”, sung by Scar.

Anyone who watched the live-action remake of The Jungle Book two years ago, which was also directed by Jon Favreau, will not be too surprised by this news. While that movie had a couple fan-favourite songs, the music was limited to give it “a more serious tone”.

Speaking with The Sun a few weeks back, Elton John — the original movie’s main composer alongside Tim Rice — said only “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?”, “Hakuna Matata”, “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King” and “Circle of Life” will be featured in the remake.

About writing a new song for the film instead, Elton John said:

“They need to have a new end credits song. There’s going to be four of our songs in the film, from the original and then there will be an end, closing song.

We’ve been speaking to Beyoncé’s people and hopefully Tim and I and her can cook up something. That’s going out in 2019 as well. And it will be great to work with her. So we will see”

While “Be Prepared” — which was sung in the original movie by the wonderful Jeremy Irons — is not as popular as the four songs that will be included, it’s still widely regarded as one of the best villain songs in the entire Disney pantheon.

As Chiwetel proved in the underseen 2005 drag queen dramedy, Kinky Boots, he is a pretty solid singer, so it’s more than a little disappointing that we won’t get to hear his take on the beloved song. It was one of the things we were looking forward to as soon as he was cast.