This actually doesn't seem too bad; Beyoncé's still far from my first pick for Nala (though I'm not opposed to it) but her producing the music intrigues me enough to warrant a listen to the soundtrack. She's been pretty on-track lately to doing a full-blown African-influenced musical project - her more recent stuff in this vein (mostly West African and Creole-influenced) was critically acclaimed and produced a lot of interesting think pieces - so this seems like a natural extension of that. Plus, with her clout I'm sure she'll at least be able to pull a lot of African artists to work on this project herself (which she's done with her aforementioned more recent post-
Lemonade albums) so I'm actually more looking forward to this than her actual character voiceover work.
Also, Chiwetel Ejiofor (another Nigerian British actor who you might know from
12 Years A Slave and
Doctor Strange) is officially in talks to play Scar:
http://www.thewrap.com/chiwetel-ejiofor ... exclusive/