To celebrate the release of Mufasa: The Lion King, Disney partnered with Monks to design a groundbreaking IRL hologram installation that reimagined one of the most iconic moments in the franchise. We brought Mufasa’s legendary appearance in the clouds to life as a larger-than-life hologram, captivating audiences on opening night at The Grove in Los Angeles. This immersive experience told the story of Mufasa’s rise from orphaned cub to beloved king, combining cutting-edge technology with timeless Disney storytelling. From concept to execution, Disney and Monks delivered a transformative fan experience that elevated the magic of The Lion King, creating a bold and unforgettable moment that reinforced Disney’s legacy of immersive, audience-centered storytelling.
In an iconic scene in The Lion King – Mufasa’s first appearance in the franchise – the character appears to Simba in the sky as a cloud formation. We settled quickly on the idea of recreating this iconic moment for the hologram: a concept that would not only look spectacular floating in the sky above Los Angeles but would also celebrate the legacy of the character of Mufasa.
We simulated the cloud system – complete with thunder and lightning – from scratch in CGI, with the scene from the film as an original source of inspiration but making adjustments to make it as impactful as possible in this unique hologram medium.
Mufasa’s appearance in the clouds made for an attention-grabbing and memorable opening. From there, we transformed our cloud simulation into a cloud portal, opening to reveal highlights from the new Mufasa movie, designed to create excitement and anticipation in our viewers. These scenes, taken from the film itself, were modified by our partners at MPC to optimize them for the hologram – for example by modifying the behaviour of the camera.
Together with a particle sim of fireflies and the majestic Pride Rock, this made for fantastically compelling content for our hologram, which stunned the LA crowd.
The first challenge came in finding and securing a super prime location where we could reach the film’s target audience on the busiest shopping day of the year – The Grove in Los Angeles the week before Christmas. This location would also have to work technically and allow the seamless 3D experience to those on the ground. Sightlines, surrounding levels of ambient light and site access points were all crucial and made this fiendishly difficult.
The key technical challenge was achieving a balance of light levels in content, live dimensional lighting and ambient lighting that would cause content to appear fully 3 dimensional to viewers on the ground AND appear balanced (not over-exposed) when captured on smartphones AND be bright enough to compete with the LED screens and other brightly lit stores and signs on the site
To do this, we built a ground based 33ft x 23ft transparent LED screen with smoke and lighting used to conceal the edges of the frame, and to conceal the fact that LED was used at all.
Lighting was used to create dimensionality, and to echo the movements of the 3D objects, such that when an object “hit” the real world, light illuminated it, and sound reflected the movement.
Directional sound was employed to convince the audience that the sound effects were actually coming from the characters they saw emerging from the sky, and to “sell” the movement of objects.
All aspects of the animation, the physical location, the hologram and sound all came together for a memorable and surprising holiday experience, driving people to see the film!
Our main objective was to create a large, unforgettable and totally unique immersive OOH 3D visual experience and viral sensation. We wanted to stage content that looked & sounded like the events of the film had suddenly descended on The Grove in Los Angeles and draw large crowds to gather every 10 minutes over two nights, to see, hear, and feel the experience. And we succeeded. Not only were fans transported that were lucky enough to see the hologram live, but they in turned shared user-generated content of the experience on their socials with 2.6M engagements on Disney Studio’s IG alone.