What happens when the king of Hollywood intellectual property meets Queen Bey?
That’s the question fans around the world and Hollywood pundits are pondering ahead of time, as Beyoncé’s latest visual album, “Black Is King,” is set to debut on July 31 on Disney Plus. The superstar artist’s top-secret project was announced less than a month ago and promises to be a bold visual celebration of black culture throughout the centuries, as well as a streaming event amid a content drought caused by blockages of coronavirus.
“Black Is King” is a feature film made up of music videos for songs from “The Gift,” an album Beyoncé produced as a companion to the 2019 live-action remake of “The Lion King,” for which she voiced the female lead. . paper. It is an adaptation process that she knows well, as she has delivered the award-winning Peabody The 2017 album “Lemonade” as an album and a compilation of stacked videos, joined by their own narration. With “Black Is King,” however, Beyoncé isn’t just drawing on her experience as an established artist and woman of color. She is taking her own spin on the billion dollar intellectual property behind “The Lion King.”
That Disney Plus is home to such a broad interpretation of its products is not surprising. However, if previews and promotional images are any indication, Beyoncé is pushing the limits of what many expect from the Disney machine.
“Beyoncé is an excellent choice for anyone, but this indicates to me that they are going to get more elastic about what belongs to Disney Plus compared to what belongs to Hulu,” said one of the top film executives in a rival studio. , on condition of anonymity. She says Variety.
Disney acquired Hulu when it bought from other Fox and Comcast stakeholders in 2019, and the biased platform for adults is largely considered a counterprogrammer for Disney Plus, whose premium content hose comes from labels owned by Disney, including Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm. , Walt Disney Animation and National Geographic. While all are stylistically different and innovative, the content of these engines is in line with the assurance that the Disney brand is known for, one in which heavy social issues are delivered with healthy doses of sunlight.
“Black Is King” takes the story of the protagonist of “The Lion King”, Simba, and superimposes it on a young black man who is expelled from his family and forced to find himself in a ruthless world. The themes of repression and the horrors of colonialism, as well as the constant message of black pride, are paramount and central. As with any Beyoncé project, representations of gender equality and the celebration of the female form and sexual power are also evident. The film will be the most direct confrontation of a timely social discussion about racism that Disney Plus has seen in his young life, especially for a corporate owner who has recently taken steps to rectify transgressions as callous rides in theme parks (Splash Mountain at Disneyland , based on the troubled animated film “Song of the South”) and warns viewers of “outdated cultural representations” in the content of its streaming library.
“The importance of making” Black Is King “as a brand statement outweighs any risk of perception about its customers,” says the executive. “Disney Plus is also reaching a limit in terms of subscriptions with the content they have. They must ask themselves how they can keep adults close and how to show originality when we can’t shoot anything. “
Jacqueline Coley, editor of the metacritical site Rotten Tomatoes, says: “For black women like me, there is nothing greater than Beyoncé, and what she does is associate with power. For someone like her, there are very few marks that can reach the level of power she brings when entering a room. Disney recognizes it. “
Coley points to the recent acquisition and accelerated broadcast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking Broadway show “Hamilton,” a production that she says also had some navigation by Disney.
“When you look at things like ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Black Is King,’ they are bridges to content that has not been part of Disney’s long history,” she says. “But as they hope to be a moral global entertainment brand, it’s less about model-fitting work and more about how they can serve a brand that has 50 million subscribers.”
