When, nearly six years ago, I last met Jenkins he was still processing that weirdness . He is over it now. “Sometimes when you enter a country the person at border control asks, ‘What do you do?’” he says.
“They’ll then say, ‘Have you done anything I would have seen?’ I’ll say, ‘Maybe. I was at the Oscars when they read out the wrong name.’ They’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re that guy!’ Always, always, always! Ha ha!” Moonlight, Jenkins’s second film, suggested the presence of a singular cinematic voice: studied, calm, dream-aware.
If Beale Street Could Talk , his next feature, confirmed that voice could be maintained. Back then we speculated about what might come next. I wouldn’t have bet he’d spend the next few years working on the follow-up to Disney ’s world-conquering photorealistic remake of The Lion King, its own 1994 hit.
Yet here we are. Mufasa: The Lion King, an enormous prequel, is about to occupy Christmas. The premiere was in a wee space at the junction of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue called the Dolby Theatre.
You know? Where the Oscars take place. “When I walked out on stage to give the speech to intro the movie I immediately was taken back there,” Jenkins says. “Because you look out and it feels the same.
It’s the same chairs. I realised it was the only time I had been back on that stage since the night – since that moment I walked off the stage. It was a very cool experience.
” One can understand why Jenkins w.
