Nine years later, the next phase of the song’s history began when the New York group the Tokens wanted to morph “Wimoweh” into a pop song with fresh lyrics, and songwriters George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti, and Luigi Creatore were commissioned to write new words for what became “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a Number One hit in 1961.ĭirector Sam Cullman’s movie The Lion’s Share - which premiered earlier this year on Netflix as part of the network’s ReMastered series - expertly laid out the song’s journey, the impact of Malan’s work, and the financial issues that continued after the family reached its settlement with Disney. The film revealed the expiration of the deal in 2017. Picking up where Malan’s story left off, The Lion’s Share detailed how the Linda estate, with the help of South African lawyer and copyright expert Owen Dean of the South African law firm Spoor and Fisher, sued Disney for copyright violation in 2004 - and how the story of a poor African family taking on a mega-corporation reverberated around the world. Mishearing the lyric and assuming it was a folk song, he changed the title to “ Wimoweh,” recorded it with the Weavers in 1952, and mainlined Linda’s melody onto the pop charts. After Linda and his group the Evening Birds released “Mbube” in 1939, a copy of the record - featuring Linda’s beguiling falsetto lilt - wound up with Pete Seeger. I would not say it’s a happy ending.”Īs South African journalist Rian Malan laid out in his deeply reported RS exposé “In the Jungle: Inside the Long, Hidden Genealogy of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’” in 2000, the song’s story is as tangled as just about any in pop history. “The family would like to know the implications of featured in The Lion King to the rights of Solomon Linda,” says Themba Dladla, a grandson of Solomon Linda who is currently working with the estate. “They want to know who still holds the international rights and how can we work toward having those rights.
“I’ve got more than a bit of melancholy in my head now.” (The new movie also includes a remake of “Mbube” by South African singer Lebo M., and according to a lawyer for Folkways, the publisher of “Mbube,” the family will be receiving songwriting royalties from its placement in the film.)īut the idea that the family is again missing out on a windfall for Solomon Linda’s contribution to pop music is the latest in a seemingly endless number of cruel twists in the saga of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” one that has reopened old wounds and exposed other financial issues that have emerged since the original deal with Disney. “Nobody knew in advance into the future,” sighs Hanro Friedrich, a South African lawyer who worked with the family at the time. (Disney declined to comment on the record for this story.)Īnd when the paperwork for that deal was worked out over a decade ago, no one imagined that The Lion King would be remade with computer-generated animals. Nothing in the situation is unlawful: The contract between Disney and the Linda family was finalized, and the family has no legal right to continue receiving royalties. The family’s settlement arrangement with Disney ended on the last day of December 2017, a year and a half before the new movie opened, which means, as it stands now, that Linda’s heirs don’t stand to profit from the inclusion of the song in The Lion King. The soundtrack album broke into the Top 20 on the Rolling Stone Top 200 album chart.īut once again, it seems as if the Linda family won’t be benefiting from the song. And despite mixed reviews, it has pulled in more than $500 million in the States (and over $1 billion outside the U.S.).
Again, this appeared to be good news: With a cast that already included Beyoncé and Donald Glover, the new Lion King had all the signs of a potential blockbuster. The Beatles in India: 16 Things You Didn't KnowĬut to early 2019, when the Linda family learned that a new version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” sung by Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner, would be used in the remake of The Lion King.
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