'Long Shot’s Seth Rogen says ‘The Lion King’ isn’t an identical remake (exclusive)

Anyone who’s been watching The Lion King live-action remake marketing campaign might be worried that there won’t be enough room for Seth Rogen to do what he does best – improvise. But, as it turns out, there’s a lot Disney hasn’t shown us yet.

“It’s not shot for shot, just the stuff they’ve released is like that. It’s different, and we improvised a lot.”

Of course, there were no adaptation restrictions on Long Shot, and it led to a fairly long first edit.

“My first cut was a four and a half hours long,” director Jonathan Levine tells Yahoo Movies UK. “It’s excruciating to watch anything that’s four and a half hours long. You find the best couple of hours out of that, and you’re able to get a great rhythm of joke, and a great rhythm of comedy, and romance.”

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“We did have to cut a lot of jokes, but even a joke is funny in the moment, unless a joke is moving the story forward, it’s fine to cut. I don’t get too sad about cutting jokes. Bob Odenkirk had a long run about how he should have played Lincoln, and he was pretending to be Lincoln, it was so funny. We didn’t want to indulge in moments that felt like improv, but that was a shame to cut, because Bob was so funny.”

Read more: Long Shot UK trailer

“That was so funny,” Seth Rogen agrees.

“I was so happy to be in that audience to witness that,” Charlize Theron says. “When things are that good, you don’t want to be the person who ruins the take and you don’t have it. There’s just nothing worse than that, I think it’s so reckless.”

“It annoys comedians when you laugh,” Rogen says.

“I think I annoyed Bob on one day, I had to be framed out. He’s just so committed. He doesn’t ever play the joke, and yet it’s the funniest thing to watch.”

You can see what jokes actually made the cut when Long Shot is released in the UK tomorrow.