Beyoncé will be returning to the Lion King franchise for a prequel to the 2019 remake, and she’s bringing daughter Blue Ivy with her.
Variety revealed in a report on Monday (April 29) that the 12-year-old will play Samba and Nala’s daughter, Kiara, in Mufasa: The Lion King. Bey will reprise her role as Nala, while other former cast members Donald Glover, Seth Rogan, Billy Eichner and more will also be returning.
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The new film, which will be soundtracked by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s compositions, will explore Mufasa’s origin story and explore his childhood with his brother Scar.
Mufasa: The Lion King premieres in theaters on December 20. Check out the trailer below:
In an interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings last fall, JAY-Z revealed that that “Blue Ivy” wasn’t the name he and Beyoncé were initially going with for their daughter.
“She was meant to be Brooklyn,” the rapper said, presumably since the that is the New York borough where Hov was born and raised.
“That was the name we had in theory. But when we got the sonograms, you know, [the fetus] is super small, and we was calling her a blueberry. Like, ‘Look at the little blueberry!’ It was like a nickname. For nine months we were like, ‘Look at the little blueberry.’ So it was just natural, we just took the ‘berry’ off and called her Blue.”
The “Marcy Me” MC spoke frequently of his child throughout the interview, and at one point even recalled how she used to be embarrassed of was him when she was younger.
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“Blue – she be fronting on me a little bit, but I catch her in the corner,” he said. “Now she asks me if this is cool — her sneakers or whatever she’s wearing. She’s come back, but there was a time where she was like, ‘Daaaad!’ I was like, ‘I’m cool. I don’t what you saying! At your house, your parents is cool!”
Blue Ivy is Beyoncé and Hov’s first child. Born in 2012, she is now a big sister to her twin siblings Rumi and Sir, who were born five years after her.
