Mufasa Star Billy Eichner Pitches Timon & Pumbaa Spinoff Series With Seth Rogen

Billy Eichner is hoping Mufasa: The Lion King won’t be the end of his time in the Pride Lands. The actor reprises his role as Timon in the new prequel, and in an interview with ComicBook.com he raved about how much he loves the role. He said that he’d love to work with this cast again, proposing a spinoff series about Timon and Pumbaa starring himself and Seth Rogen.

Mufasa is a prequel set years before the events of The Lion King, but Timon and Pumbaa are there as a framing device, narrating the story from afar. Their commentary takes some creative liberties at times, so we asked Eichner if he’d be up for expanding that in more shorts or featurettes. He responded: “I want a musical – why stop at shorts? Yeah, I love playing Timon, and I love working with Seth Rogen. I would do anything with Seth and these characters, it’s so fun to work with him, and when we’re in the studio it doesn’t feel that different than working on a more traditional live-action movie.”

When asked how he felt about Timon and Pumbaa not getting a full-on musical number in this movie, Eichner answered quickly: “Disappointed. I’ve known Lin-Manuel Miranda for over 20 years, and he’s heard it from me, he’s heard my complaints. I told him I need to build an entire cabaret act around timon next time, now.”

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Mufasa is both a prequel and sequel to the 2019 remake of The Lion King, using photorealistic CGI animation and is called, for lack of a better term, “live-action.” This movie picks up sometime after Scar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is cast down, when Simba (Donald Glover) and Nala (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter) have had a daughter, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter). In it, Rafiki (John Kani) tells Kiara the story of how Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) became king of the Pride Lands, while Timon and Pumbaa interrupt with their own color commentary. Most of the movie takes place in the past, following the action Rafiki, Timon and Pumbaa are describing.

So far, Disney has not announced any official plans for further spinoffs in this franchise, but that shouldn’t discourage Eichner and his fans. The Lion King franchise has seen a lot of iterations since its debut in 1994, and Timon and Pumbaa have often featured heavily in them. You can stream both versions of The Lion King now on Disney+, along with the direc-to-video animated sequels, the 1995 Timon & Pumbaa animated TV series, and the 2015 Lion Guard animated series.