But how much (non-singing) Queen Bey should audiences expect to hear in this reenvisioning of Pride Rock?
Only a bit.
Though the new film is 30 minutes longer than its predecessor (118 minutes in 2019 vs. 88 minutes in 1994) and features additional scenes for the adult Nala, Beyoncé’s screen time is fairly comparable to Moira Kelly’s in the original.
At my screening of the remake, I tallied 35 lines spoken by her character — interpreting a “line” as being any dialogue a character speaks before another character follows up, whether it’s one word or multiple sentences. Some of those lines are simply the exclamation “Simba!” I tallied 46 lines for Kelly, several of which are also “Simba!”
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Beyoncé’s musical contributions to the remake vastly outweigh that of Kelly, who did not sing in the original. (Singer-songwriter Sally Dworsky performed Nala’s part in the first “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”) Besides her duet with Donald Glover (who plays the adult Simba), Beyoncé gets an additional musical moment — her own “Gonna Fly Now” sequence in the form of the chorus of the new song “Spirit,” which plays over Simba’s triumphant gallop across the desert. Both songs feature Beyoncé’s signature riffing.
For some, the ratio of promotion to actual screen time may disappoint. But hey, it’s still Beyoncé, playing a Lion queen — to her most zealous of worshippers, none of us are worthy.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.