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Dear Friends and Fans,
This isn’t quite what Gameplan Volume 2 was going to be about, but I thought that everyone should be up
to date on the changes the story has taken over the years before pressing on. This is going to be posted to
the site by the ‘journal’. So whether you’ve been there from the beginning or are just now joining us, enjoy:
the story within the story, before the beginning, and beyond what you see.
And if you’re new enough to have not received Gameplan Vol 1, just let me know and I’ll send it to you.
The files attached are a song by Susanna Bennison that I mention later on.
The Circle of Life’s life cycle
In 1994, The Lion King is released in theatres, starting it all. At this point, I’m 11 years old and have never
considered writing, but the story simply keeps going in my head and it doesn’t end with the movie credits.
After a little while with no sequel, I decide to take a crack at it.
By the time Simba’s Pride is previewed, I have the beginnings of a story. I have never heard of the concept
of a ‘fanfic’ and my one and only plan is to write a future theatric movie. Obviously, I’ve also never read
any of the other LK fanfics out there, so I didn’t know the names ‘Tanabi’ or ‘Kopa’. My main character is
‘Naba’, which is just a mix of ‘Nala’ and ‘Simba’. Naba’s best friends are Hersh and Rae, brother and sister.
The villain in this version is a shady lioness named ‘Liza’ who wants to replace Simba with her own son,
‘Legion’ (which Zira apparently thought was a good idea). Liza lures Simba into a trap where he is
ambushed by Liza’s brothers, ‘Tarsh’ and ‘Axel’. Rounding out the cast is an adolescent male who guards
Pride Rock named… ‘Timusa’.
Not about to give up, I seek new inspiration, and Jothra and Zoay fly into my imagination. I still work
mainly in outline and narrative format, intending to turn it into a screenplay later on. Some differences in
this working story (called ‘Legend of the Angel Lions’) from what we’ll eventually call Version 1 are the
absence of Timon and Pumbaa and humor in general. This stage takes up most of my teenage years and I
never quite get a beginning-to-end story written down.
When I start college, I find I actually enjoy my English and Writing classes, which are a big switch from the
endless years of Grammar in high school. I get together as many of my old notes as I could find and get
back to work. At this point I know a little more about how an animated movie is made, like how a
storyboard is just as important as a script (and more so, sometimes). One problem. Me no draw good. So
I decide to teach myself how to draw Lion King characters. I search the internet for a little while and you’ll
never guess what I found! Why, I found The Lion King Fan Art Archive at fanart.lionking.org, brought to
you by Brian Tiemann, of course. It dawns on me that I don’t need to learn how to draw; I need to get
Lion King artists interested in my story.
From the start of college in the autumn of 2000 until I entered the US Air Force in the summer of 2004,
I worked on Jothra and Zoay’s story in the screenplay format that I still use today. The Lion King 1 ½ (or
3: Hakuna Matata) gave me the inspiration for Timon and Pumbaa’s side of the story, and driving to New
York City to see The Lion King on Broadway filled in some gaps and got me thinking about songs. By the
time I left my home in Ohio to start Basic Military Training, I had Version 1 completely done, at the time
titled ‘Legend of Destiny’.
Version 1 (Legend of Destiny)
In this version, Jothra is grey. Zoay has wings and is referred to as the ‘Destined One’. Timusa isn’t Kovu
and Kiara’s son, he is the son of the Pridelands’ Battlechief, a lion named Rashan. Rashan is with young
Timusa when they find infant Jothra and his dead mother, so Jothra is really adopted as Rashan’s son and
Timusa’s brother. The warband of Pridelander males led by Rashan and later by Timusa is quite important.
And there is a lot of action in the metaphysical realms. The story opens with a celestial battle between the
sky images of Scar and Mufasa that puts Kiara and Vitani in danger and introduces K’Tia and the flight-
capable Zoay. When Jothra and Zoay sneak off to help the armies, it’s by flight and they stop at the top of
the monolith rock in the Hakuna Matata oasis. After resting, Zoay grabs Jothra and dive-bombs thousands
of feet down into the lush jungle below, ending up in a pool.
Agani takes all the cubs except Bela out to meet Nitka and the scouts in hopes of convincing them to
switch sides. Bela stays in the oasis with the meerkat mob. Jothra and Zoay take off again and unwittingly
fly into a sandstorm that forces them down into the hyena canyon. In this version, while Jothra is
unconscious he has a vision of the Sky Lands where he meets Mufasa, Sarabi, Zazu and many other great
kings of the past. He receives instructions from Malachi, the first king of Pride Rock, and is equipped to
fight powerful evil. When he wakes up, he destroys a Spectre (demonic hyena-shaped darkness) and leads
the hyenas (with Shenzi, Bonzai and Ed) toward the battleground as Zoay flies on ahead. At about the
same time, Bela leads the meerkat mob towards Izusa in case there’s any way for them to help.
In this earlier version, the Pridelander army actually does battle with Nitka and the Izusa scouts, killing
them all and losing a few Pridelanders. They then move on to the escarpment. During the battle, Zoay
coordinates everything from the air, directing the Pridelander lioness army, male warband and free hyenas
against the Izusa warband and still-enslaved hyena horde. Once our heroes make it to the top of the
escarpment and seem on the cusp of victory, we meet Legion for the first time. In the spirit-side heavy
versions, Legion is quite demonic, infused with dark power from his father beyond the grave, Scar. Simba
loses his life in battle with Rogan, and Legion sneaks away in the process, setting a large forest fire that
closes in on the escarpment. Bela, a genius even as a cub in this version, quickly directs the meerkats to
dig a trench around the escarpment and set another fire within the trench, which depletes the oxygen,
stopping the bigger fire from closing.
Years pass and the romantic story between adolescent Jothra and Zoay is similar, but the climax is
completely different. Jothra returns to the escarpment with Kovu. Scar manifests as a storm of fire and
smoke and actually kills Jothra. Scar then stages a duel between Kovu and Legion for the lives of Kiara
and Agani. Zoay mourns for Jothra, who is brought back to life after an encounter with Sozo. Kovu
appears to be beaten by Legion, but Kiara tackles Legion off the cliff at the last second in a suicide attack.
She’s caught by Zoay before hitting the ground, and the newly re-empowered Jothra banishes Scar, backed
up by Sozo himself. Many of these differences persist until Version 4, our most drastic re-write.
Cubs’ Quest
After I finished Basic Military Training in July ’04 and went to my first school in California, I started
seeing this scene in my head. Oftentimes that’s how it is for me; I’ll see a few scenes in exact detail and
string an outline between them. In this case, I saw a little male cub with golden wings dive out the sky to
pull open a parachute to save a crate full of other cubs. The story leading up to this became Cubs’ Quest
Episode One: Serengeti Sky. During this same time, I started reading fan fictions about Tanabi or Kopa as
Simba’s son seen at the end of the first movie, which made a lot of sense to me. Around these two
characters, I started writing Cubs’ Quest Episode Two: Long Lost Legacy. This was also about the same
time I signed a contract with the ST Literary Agency for professional representation and filed for a
copyright with the US Library of Congress.
The Cubs’ Quest episodes can be found at http://skysoldja.com/cubsquest.html . These are the newer
slightly tweaked versions that match up with the most recent changes to the screenplay, but they’re so
similar I didn’t bother to keep separate versions posted. In the originals, Jozay’s wings were natural and he
couldn’t summon or dismiss them. The only aspect that I truly miss is that in the older story, Timusa wasn’
t Kiara and Kovu’s son so I hooked him up with Vitani, and Hope was their daughter. So the emotional
scenes featuring Leandra originally featured Vitani, and it was in that emotional state that she hunts down
the humans that killed her mate and stole her daughter. But Timusa being Kovu and Kiara’s son definitely
works better for the screenplay, so there it is. Leandra and Timusa are cute together anyway.
Version 2
After getting my copyright, I thought about some changes I wanted to make, starting with the title. ‘Legend
of Destiny’ was just a not-quite-as-bad version of my first idea, ‘Legend of the Angel Lions’, and both of
those sounded too, well, fanfic-like. Now, I love a good fanfic as much as anyone, but that’s not how I
viewed my story. I wanted a title that didn’t tie the story down to a specific pride or lineage. I also wanted
to make Zoay as much of Jothra’s heroic equal as possible. For a while, I even worked with the idea of
making it primarily about her and calling the story ‘The Lion Queen’. Well, I finally decided on ‘The Lion
King: Circle of Life’, and that decision helped give the story more direction. I focused more on the cycles
of characters and events and tying everything together. The Simba-Kovu-Jothra theme became clearer,
and to an extent the Nala-Kiara-Zoay theme. I also turned down the Sky Land action just a tad, but kept
Sozo and the Living Circle, on which I’ve always stuck to my guns.
Version 3
One benefit of being stationed in California was the availability of Disneyland. On my second trip there in
early 2006 a friend pointed out a book in a gift store called ‘Screenplay by Disney’ by a genius of a man
named Jason Surrell (2004 Disney Editions, New York, NY). Honestly, I couldn’t think of a single better
reason for that book to be around than for doing what I’m doing. After reading and rereading the book, I
was ready to make my screenplay into something that somewhat resembled a professional work. Also
instrumental in this was the advice of my good friend in cinematography, Elijah Knuckles. I deleted
characters, redefined others, and had definite points picked out to eventually include (gasp) songs. This
version was done by the time I left California in June of 2006. This was the best version I was able to
write on my own, and is so significantly different (and significantly illustrated) that it’s still posted on the
site at http://skysoldja.com/version3.html .
Version 4
Soon after I made to Wichita Falls, Texas for my next assignment, I got a very memorable email from a
young man in Hawaii named Mathew Schmidt (http://skysoldja.com/matsletter.html). Mat and I quickly
became friends (though we have yet to meet in person) and together started throwing around ideas for a
rewrite… a major overhaul. We made some pretty big changes, our goal being to bring the story more
down-to-earth and, quite honestly, more likely to get the attention of Walt Disney Studios as a potential
cinematic feature. Jothra lost his grey coat, Zoay lost her wings. The concept of the Mark of the Destined
One was introduced. Legion traded his demonic powers for a more behind-the-scenes puppet-master
approach. We re-designed the look and personality of the Izusa lions with the help of Teresa Kerwin, Mat’s
then-friend and now-fiancée. We re-wrote the character of Timusa with the help of Alejandra Villegas,
known on the Archive as Efi Wild, author of ‘Nala’s Tears’. And I finally hammered out my songs, or at
least their lyrics. Version 4 was completed shortly after I left Texas for my next assignment in Florida at
the end of 2006.
Over the course of the Version 4b and 4c tweaks, we worked on Jothra and Zoay’s relationship, the
character of Makiwa, and Mat composed music for ‘Whisper’ and ‘Shani’. Version 4c, with links to the
songs, is currently posted as the primary story on the site at http://skysoldja.com/version4b/v4bmain.html
(do not be deceived by the URL that still says 4b).
Which brings us into the here and now. We do have ideas in the works for possible changes to the
screenplay (a Version 4d, I guess). We have a ton of new artists. We have a new song—music and lyrics—
called ‘Angel’ by Susanna Bennison of England (the files should be attached). This song will possibly
replace or be blended with ‘Whisper’. We have a few voices cast for an audio recording. And of course,
there’s the webcomic idea…, which will have to wait until next time. Until then, keep in touch, share ideas,
and shift your imagination into overdrive. May we be among the fortunate few whose dreams become reality.
-CJ Webster
This isn’t quite what Gameplan Volume 2 was going to be about, but I thought that everyone should be up
to date on the changes the story has taken over the years before pressing on. This is going to be posted to
the site by the ‘journal’. So whether you’ve been there from the beginning or are just now joining us, enjoy:
the story within the story, before the beginning, and beyond what you see.
And if you’re new enough to have not received Gameplan Vol 1, just let me know and I’ll send it to you.
The files attached are a song by Susanna Bennison that I mention later on.
The Circle of Life’s life cycle
In 1994, The Lion King is released in theatres, starting it all. At this point, I’m 11 years old and have never
considered writing, but the story simply keeps going in my head and it doesn’t end with the movie credits.
After a little while with no sequel, I decide to take a crack at it.
By the time Simba’s Pride is previewed, I have the beginnings of a story. I have never heard of the concept
of a ‘fanfic’ and my one and only plan is to write a future theatric movie. Obviously, I’ve also never read
any of the other LK fanfics out there, so I didn’t know the names ‘Tanabi’ or ‘Kopa’. My main character is
‘Naba’, which is just a mix of ‘Nala’ and ‘Simba’. Naba’s best friends are Hersh and Rae, brother and sister.
The villain in this version is a shady lioness named ‘Liza’ who wants to replace Simba with her own son,
‘Legion’ (which Zira apparently thought was a good idea). Liza lures Simba into a trap where he is
ambushed by Liza’s brothers, ‘Tarsh’ and ‘Axel’. Rounding out the cast is an adolescent male who guards
Pride Rock named… ‘Timusa’.
Not about to give up, I seek new inspiration, and Jothra and Zoay fly into my imagination. I still work
mainly in outline and narrative format, intending to turn it into a screenplay later on. Some differences in
this working story (called ‘Legend of the Angel Lions’) from what we’ll eventually call Version 1 are the
absence of Timon and Pumbaa and humor in general. This stage takes up most of my teenage years and I
never quite get a beginning-to-end story written down.
When I start college, I find I actually enjoy my English and Writing classes, which are a big switch from the
endless years of Grammar in high school. I get together as many of my old notes as I could find and get
back to work. At this point I know a little more about how an animated movie is made, like how a
storyboard is just as important as a script (and more so, sometimes). One problem. Me no draw good. So
I decide to teach myself how to draw Lion King characters. I search the internet for a little while and you’ll
never guess what I found! Why, I found The Lion King Fan Art Archive at fanart.lionking.org, brought to
you by Brian Tiemann, of course. It dawns on me that I don’t need to learn how to draw; I need to get
Lion King artists interested in my story.
From the start of college in the autumn of 2000 until I entered the US Air Force in the summer of 2004,
I worked on Jothra and Zoay’s story in the screenplay format that I still use today. The Lion King 1 ½ (or
3: Hakuna Matata) gave me the inspiration for Timon and Pumbaa’s side of the story, and driving to New
York City to see The Lion King on Broadway filled in some gaps and got me thinking about songs. By the
time I left my home in Ohio to start Basic Military Training, I had Version 1 completely done, at the time
titled ‘Legend of Destiny’.
Version 1 (Legend of Destiny)
In this version, Jothra is grey. Zoay has wings and is referred to as the ‘Destined One’. Timusa isn’t Kovu
and Kiara’s son, he is the son of the Pridelands’ Battlechief, a lion named Rashan. Rashan is with young
Timusa when they find infant Jothra and his dead mother, so Jothra is really adopted as Rashan’s son and
Timusa’s brother. The warband of Pridelander males led by Rashan and later by Timusa is quite important.
And there is a lot of action in the metaphysical realms. The story opens with a celestial battle between the
sky images of Scar and Mufasa that puts Kiara and Vitani in danger and introduces K’Tia and the flight-
capable Zoay. When Jothra and Zoay sneak off to help the armies, it’s by flight and they stop at the top of
the monolith rock in the Hakuna Matata oasis. After resting, Zoay grabs Jothra and dive-bombs thousands
of feet down into the lush jungle below, ending up in a pool.
Agani takes all the cubs except Bela out to meet Nitka and the scouts in hopes of convincing them to
switch sides. Bela stays in the oasis with the meerkat mob. Jothra and Zoay take off again and unwittingly
fly into a sandstorm that forces them down into the hyena canyon. In this version, while Jothra is
unconscious he has a vision of the Sky Lands where he meets Mufasa, Sarabi, Zazu and many other great
kings of the past. He receives instructions from Malachi, the first king of Pride Rock, and is equipped to
fight powerful evil. When he wakes up, he destroys a Spectre (demonic hyena-shaped darkness) and leads
the hyenas (with Shenzi, Bonzai and Ed) toward the battleground as Zoay flies on ahead. At about the
same time, Bela leads the meerkat mob towards Izusa in case there’s any way for them to help.
In this earlier version, the Pridelander army actually does battle with Nitka and the Izusa scouts, killing
them all and losing a few Pridelanders. They then move on to the escarpment. During the battle, Zoay
coordinates everything from the air, directing the Pridelander lioness army, male warband and free hyenas
against the Izusa warband and still-enslaved hyena horde. Once our heroes make it to the top of the
escarpment and seem on the cusp of victory, we meet Legion for the first time. In the spirit-side heavy
versions, Legion is quite demonic, infused with dark power from his father beyond the grave, Scar. Simba
loses his life in battle with Rogan, and Legion sneaks away in the process, setting a large forest fire that
closes in on the escarpment. Bela, a genius even as a cub in this version, quickly directs the meerkats to
dig a trench around the escarpment and set another fire within the trench, which depletes the oxygen,
stopping the bigger fire from closing.
Years pass and the romantic story between adolescent Jothra and Zoay is similar, but the climax is
completely different. Jothra returns to the escarpment with Kovu. Scar manifests as a storm of fire and
smoke and actually kills Jothra. Scar then stages a duel between Kovu and Legion for the lives of Kiara
and Agani. Zoay mourns for Jothra, who is brought back to life after an encounter with Sozo. Kovu
appears to be beaten by Legion, but Kiara tackles Legion off the cliff at the last second in a suicide attack.
She’s caught by Zoay before hitting the ground, and the newly re-empowered Jothra banishes Scar, backed
up by Sozo himself. Many of these differences persist until Version 4, our most drastic re-write.
Cubs’ Quest
After I finished Basic Military Training in July ’04 and went to my first school in California, I started
seeing this scene in my head. Oftentimes that’s how it is for me; I’ll see a few scenes in exact detail and
string an outline between them. In this case, I saw a little male cub with golden wings dive out the sky to
pull open a parachute to save a crate full of other cubs. The story leading up to this became Cubs’ Quest
Episode One: Serengeti Sky. During this same time, I started reading fan fictions about Tanabi or Kopa as
Simba’s son seen at the end of the first movie, which made a lot of sense to me. Around these two
characters, I started writing Cubs’ Quest Episode Two: Long Lost Legacy. This was also about the same
time I signed a contract with the ST Literary Agency for professional representation and filed for a
copyright with the US Library of Congress.
The Cubs’ Quest episodes can be found at http://skysoldja.com/cubsquest.html . These are the newer
slightly tweaked versions that match up with the most recent changes to the screenplay, but they’re so
similar I didn’t bother to keep separate versions posted. In the originals, Jozay’s wings were natural and he
couldn’t summon or dismiss them. The only aspect that I truly miss is that in the older story, Timusa wasn’
t Kiara and Kovu’s son so I hooked him up with Vitani, and Hope was their daughter. So the emotional
scenes featuring Leandra originally featured Vitani, and it was in that emotional state that she hunts down
the humans that killed her mate and stole her daughter. But Timusa being Kovu and Kiara’s son definitely
works better for the screenplay, so there it is. Leandra and Timusa are cute together anyway.
Version 2
After getting my copyright, I thought about some changes I wanted to make, starting with the title. ‘Legend
of Destiny’ was just a not-quite-as-bad version of my first idea, ‘Legend of the Angel Lions’, and both of
those sounded too, well, fanfic-like. Now, I love a good fanfic as much as anyone, but that’s not how I
viewed my story. I wanted a title that didn’t tie the story down to a specific pride or lineage. I also wanted
to make Zoay as much of Jothra’s heroic equal as possible. For a while, I even worked with the idea of
making it primarily about her and calling the story ‘The Lion Queen’. Well, I finally decided on ‘The Lion
King: Circle of Life’, and that decision helped give the story more direction. I focused more on the cycles
of characters and events and tying everything together. The Simba-Kovu-Jothra theme became clearer,
and to an extent the Nala-Kiara-Zoay theme. I also turned down the Sky Land action just a tad, but kept
Sozo and the Living Circle, on which I’ve always stuck to my guns.
Version 3
One benefit of being stationed in California was the availability of Disneyland. On my second trip there in
early 2006 a friend pointed out a book in a gift store called ‘Screenplay by Disney’ by a genius of a man
named Jason Surrell (2004 Disney Editions, New York, NY). Honestly, I couldn’t think of a single better
reason for that book to be around than for doing what I’m doing. After reading and rereading the book, I
was ready to make my screenplay into something that somewhat resembled a professional work. Also
instrumental in this was the advice of my good friend in cinematography, Elijah Knuckles. I deleted
characters, redefined others, and had definite points picked out to eventually include (gasp) songs. This
version was done by the time I left California in June of 2006. This was the best version I was able to
write on my own, and is so significantly different (and significantly illustrated) that it’s still posted on the
site at http://skysoldja.com/version3.html .
Version 4
Soon after I made to Wichita Falls, Texas for my next assignment, I got a very memorable email from a
young man in Hawaii named Mathew Schmidt (http://skysoldja.com/matsletter.html). Mat and I quickly
became friends (though we have yet to meet in person) and together started throwing around ideas for a
rewrite… a major overhaul. We made some pretty big changes, our goal being to bring the story more
down-to-earth and, quite honestly, more likely to get the attention of Walt Disney Studios as a potential
cinematic feature. Jothra lost his grey coat, Zoay lost her wings. The concept of the Mark of the Destined
One was introduced. Legion traded his demonic powers for a more behind-the-scenes puppet-master
approach. We re-designed the look and personality of the Izusa lions with the help of Teresa Kerwin, Mat’s
then-friend and now-fiancée. We re-wrote the character of Timusa with the help of Alejandra Villegas,
known on the Archive as Efi Wild, author of ‘Nala’s Tears’. And I finally hammered out my songs, or at
least their lyrics. Version 4 was completed shortly after I left Texas for my next assignment in Florida at
the end of 2006.
Over the course of the Version 4b and 4c tweaks, we worked on Jothra and Zoay’s relationship, the
character of Makiwa, and Mat composed music for ‘Whisper’ and ‘Shani’. Version 4c, with links to the
songs, is currently posted as the primary story on the site at http://skysoldja.com/version4b/v4bmain.html
(do not be deceived by the URL that still says 4b).
Which brings us into the here and now. We do have ideas in the works for possible changes to the
screenplay (a Version 4d, I guess). We have a ton of new artists. We have a new song—music and lyrics—
called ‘Angel’ by Susanna Bennison of England (the files should be attached). This song will possibly
replace or be blended with ‘Whisper’. We have a few voices cast for an audio recording. And of course,
there’s the webcomic idea…, which will have to wait until next time. Until then, keep in touch, share ideas,
and shift your imagination into overdrive. May we be among the fortunate few whose dreams become reality.
-CJ Webster
