Executive producer Mark Gunton has revealed that Sir David Attenborough thought he was 'mad' when he learned about the ambitious plan to film a male lion cub from infancy to adulthood for National Geographic's new series Lion.
The series follows a cub named Kio in Kenya's Maasai Mara over four years, from eight weeks old until he becomes an adult strong enough to claim a throne. Gunton, a longtime collaborator of Sir David, told Metro that the natural history legend was astounded by the project's ambitions.
'He actually did say he thought I was mad, but he also thought if you can pull this off…he very kindly said it's a kind of new genre. So he's a big supporter of it because it's another window into learning about nature,' Gunton said.
Following a male cub was a 'huge risk'
Gunton explained that the crew faced significant doubt when they began the project. 'When people heard we were doing this, they all thought we were mad. Even when they didn't even know we were just following a male cub, because of course, you try and keep these things a bit quiet because you don't want anybody to know what you're doing,' he recalled.
'But following a male cub is almost insanity because lots of them don't make it; they have a higher mortality rate. But also they tend to leave. The nature of lions is that when males get to a certain age, they tend to be evicted by either the males that are the current kings, or for other reasons, and disappear. And often properly disappear, never seen again. So it was a huge risk.'
Only around one in eight male lion cubs survive to adulthood, while various statistics claim that between 20 to 50% of cubs make it past the age of two.
Passion project for the creative team
The idea for Lion came from multiple sources. Gunton had recently worked on the BBC series Dynasties, which included a pride of lions in the Maasai Mara. Jon Favreau directed the 2019 live-action remake of The Lion King, while Hans Zimmer composed the score for both the 1994 original and the remake.
'Jon, Hans and I, our job was to drive the vision of it. It was rather nice that Jo, Hans and I have worked together now, either together, all three of us, or individually, on a number of projects,' Gunton, a senior executive at the BBC Natural History Unit, said.
'This one seemed the one where absolutely it's a no-brainer to come together, because of Jon and Hans having worked on the remake Lion King, Hans on the original Lion King. There's a lot of emotional investment in this from all of us in different ways, and you don't get these opportunities very often.'
Parallels to The Lion King
Gunton acknowledged that the series makes both accidental and deliberate connections to the original Lion King story. 'The fundamental difference is that in The Lion King there is only one king, whereas in nature, there's never one king. They're a coalition of kings, plural. Within them there'll always be one that maybe has a slight edge at times, and that's another dynamic. Maybe that's the story of series two,' he said.
Gunton hopes the series will appeal to audiences of all ages, from six-year-olds to 90-year-olds, and emphasised that the show demonstrates lions are far more than 'jaws and claws'. 'Of course, lions are predators; they eat things, and they fight. But much more of the time, it's more subtle. It's much more about social connections and decisions about alliances and politics, so we've majored on that, which I think is more relatable to our own lives, because there's a lot of parallels to what goes on about maternal care and about brotherly rivalry,' he explained.
Gunton also praised the cinematographers who worked on the series, including Sophie Darlington and Simon Blakeney. 'The cinematographers on this, just amazing sixth sense about how to get those one-off moments,' he said. Lion is available to stream on Disney Plus.
