'The Lion King' remake is half an hour longer than the original

The running time for The Lion King remake has finally been released and it clocks in at 30 minutes longer than the animated original.

While Disney’s 1994 classic was just 88 minutes long, the upcoming take on the story will eventually come in at 118 minutes and 7 seconds. In other words, that’s just shy of two hours long.

Read more: Seth Rogen says The Lion King isn’t an identical remake

The elongated take on The Lion King is hardly a surprise, though. Disney have been giving viewers more bang for their buck with their reimaginings of their classic animated cannon.

2017’s Beauty And The Beast ended up lasting 129 minutes, which was 45 minutes longer than its 1991 counterpart, while Aladdin’s 128 minute running time also extended its 1992 original by 38 minutes, too, which suggests that director Jon Favreau actually might have been rather lenient with his extra scenes for The Lion King.

Favreau has been very open about his deep admiration for the original Lion King. So much so that he even admitted that he had to include some of its most iconic shots in his version. Favreau has insisted that the film won’t be a shot-for-shot remake, though, which will definitely be the case now that it is half an hour longer.

Read more: Fans have mixed reaction to Lion King posters

Instead, when it came to overseeing The Lion King, Favreau told USA Today, “The challenge here was to tell a story in a different way but still deliver on people’s expectations while surprising them somehow.”

We’ll see if he can achieve that when The Lion King, which features the voices of Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, John Oliver, James Earl Jones, Chiwitel Ejiofor, Keegan Michael Key and someone named Beyonce, is released on July 19.