How Barry Jenkins and Lin-Manuel Miranda crafted the vision of 'Mufasa: The Lion King' 

LOS ANGELES -- In "Mufasa: The Lion King," director Barry Jenkins brings the animal kingdom to life in extraordinary ways.

On The Red Carpet's George Pennacchio sat down with Jenkins and songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda to dive into their creative process behind the highly anticipated film.

While the animals may not be real, every detail was carefully crafted.

Jenkins shared, "The one thing I will say is, people are like 'What was on set? What was there?' The animators were there in suits, moving, doing all the blocking of the lions, and our camera was there in real time. Typically, in 2D animation, you're drawing with your hand, but in this process, the animators were drawing with their whole bodies."

While lifelike animals were one piece of the puzzle, Lin-Manuel Miranda elevated the story by crafting the music for the film.

He explained why he was drawn to the project, saying, "I knew I'd learn a lot. I'm an enormous fan of Barry's movies, and the only measure of whether I'm going to say yes to a project is, 'Am I going to learn from this process?' I knew I would learn so much from him."

"Lin and I had met very briefly in the past," Jenkins added. "We had exchanged little notes, but when it came time to make this film and the idea of working with Lin was floated I went and watched interviews with Lin and your energy is always just so earnest and so passionate about what you're doing, and I was like 'Oh this is gonna be a slam dunk.'"

Read also: How the film's star, Aaron Pierre, approached singing in a film for the first time!

See the vision come to life when "Mufasa: The Lion King" releases in theaters Dec. 20.

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