Yet if you compare the stage version of the story to the original Lion King, the animated film that inspired the musical, you’re in for an even bigger surprise! The original Disney film only has a runtime of a breezy and short hour and a half. That might feel long but it’s more or less standard for a Broadway musical’s runtime in fact, two other popular musicals, Cats and Les Miserables, run for 2 hours 20 minutes and 2 hours 50 minutes respectively, so the Lion King Musical is pretty much right smack dab in the range of what you’d expect for a first-tier Broadway show, complete with intermission just as you would expect. If you’ve ever wondered how long is the Lion King Musical, you’ll probably be surprised to know that the stage production clocks in at about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Here are the best and most interesting highlights and curiosities regarding the Lion King Musical. In fact, whether you’ve sat through it a thousand times or you’ve never seen it at all, we’re betting there’s plenty you might not know about this Disney masterpiece that’s been conquering stages around the world for more than 20 years. But you’ve never seen it told quite like this. You know the story: the young lion cub Simba, heir apparent to the Pride Lands as the son of the king Mufasa, comes into his own after a terrible tragedy that sees him claiming his birthright as king of all the beasts. Taking the theater world by storm just three years after the animated movie broke box office records in 1994, The Lion King Musical is a modern classic of live theater. First produced in 1997 to thunderous applause and in near-constant rotation on Broadway, London’s West End, and countless national and world tours, the stage adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King is a success story more than twenty years in the making.

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