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00:00I have a question about The Lion King.
00:01So is it true that in Can You Feel the Love Tonight,
00:05it was originally supposed to be Timon and Pumbaa,
00:07and you said no, it has to be between Simba and Nala?
00:11No, it was different.
00:12It was actually, you should tell the story,
00:15but they took it out of the film completely.
00:17So when Elton screamed Lion King,
00:18there was no Can You Feel the Love Tonight.
00:20Maybe you should tell the story.
00:22I did The Lion King, obviously with Disney,
00:24and then Jeffrey Katzenberg,
00:25who was very involved in the film,
00:27and was great to work with,
00:29as with the whole Disney team,
00:30came down to Atlanta and showed me a rough cut of the film,
00:33nearly finished film,
00:35and there was no Can You Feel the Love Tonight.
00:37Jeffrey, where's Can You Feel the Love Tonight?
00:40He said, well, we just couldn't find a place for it.
00:42And I said, it's a love song.
00:44Every Disney animation film has a great love song.
00:46You really ought to reconsider this.
00:48And I was quite astonished that it wasn't there.
00:51Not hurt, just greatly surprised.
00:54And to his credit, they went back
00:55and they found a place for it, and it won the Oscar.
00:58And so, working with people like that,
01:02that we have done with Disney on this whole thing,
01:05and the live broadcast from Dodger Stadium,
01:07is a pleasure, because they listen, and we're a team.
01:10And for Jeffrey to go back and say,
01:11listen, Elton says we should put this back in the film,
01:14and they did, and as I say, it won the Oscar.
01:17It's Circle of Life should have won the Oscar,
01:18but I'm not gonna complain.
01:20Why Circle of Life?
01:21Because it's the song of The Lion King.
01:25It starts The Lion King.
01:26And you hear the Circle of Life,
01:28and you think of The Lion King.
01:31And yeah, to me, that's the song that makes The Lion King.
01:35But I'm not gonna complain.
01:36So when you saw it, there was no Can You Feel the Love Tonight?
01:38It's the peak of the movie, it's the soul of the movie.
01:41It wasn't, no.
01:43They took it out completely.
01:44Yeah.
01:45It wasn't there.
01:46There was no Can You Feel the Love Tonight.
01:48But then when the film came out, there was.
01:51But it's great, isn't it great to work with people
01:53when you collaborate, that they can listen to you?
01:57A lot of studios would have said, oh, we're tough.
01:58A tough luck.
01:59And this was such an important movie for them
02:02because it was their first ever original animation film.
02:05And it's been the biggest success as a commercial success.
02:10I don't know the actual numbers,
02:12but it's often quoted as the most successful
02:15entertainment product in history, like across everything.
02:19Don't know a grand total on that,
02:21but that's not too bad for your first animated film.
02:25It opened so many doors for me, that film,
02:26and I'm so grateful for that.