Its Acclaim Highlights The Viability of Commodifying Captive Lions For Profit
It was a big weekend for “Lion Whisperer” Kevin Richardson. The movie for which he helped purchase and train several captive bred white lion cubs, Mia And The White Lion, enjoyed a premier screening first at the Grimaldi Forum of Monaco, then in Paris. In attendance at the Monaco screening were members of the cast, including the children Richardson trained to work with the lions used in filming, as well as Richardson himself and director, Gilles de Maistre. Even His Serene Highness Albert II, Prince of Monaco participated in the event, posing for photos with Richardson and the teen stars of the ill-conceived film.
Richardson’s social media pages posted photos, and even a short video clip from what seemed to be a question and answer session. In the clip, Richardson states that lions ending up in the canned hunting industry is a big reason behind why he became involved in making Mia And The White Lion. He goes on to state that his foundation “fights against” the canned hunting industry, and that it’s his hope that the movie Mia And The White Lion does well, and gives a “voice to lions” and brings world-wide attention to the issues of captive lions, and the canned hunting industry which is continually fed by the captive lion breeding industry.
But there are several profoundly troubling quandaries associated with Richardson’s claims, and with his attempts to justify both the movie, and his participation in making it.
The most glaringly blatant of these problems is the fact that if your foundation truly–and ethically–fights against an abusive industry, you do not participate in that industry.
Period.
Not for the sake of saving a few animals, not for the sake of spreading awareness, not for any reason at all.
If your foundation is willing to compromise itself, and be complicit to the very abuse it claims to stand against in order to achieve its own goals, then the ethics of your foundation are for sale. The only question is how much it will cost for someone to buy them.
In the case of Mia And The White Lion, that price is, at least in part, quite obvious: Richardson receives worldwide fame for his participation (plus whatever he was paid and will receive in revenue from sales) as well as the several young, soon-to-be-worldwide-famous magnificent white lions used in the making of the movie, who will be in Richardson’s care for the rest of their lives. Richardson has already used one of these lions for the creation of high-end art photography (although since this young lion was named Thor, after the white lion Richardson previously owned, many fans didn’t realize that this lion was actually a new addition to Richardson’s sanctuary) and we can presume that since Richardson believes that his lions benefit emotionally from interacting with them, and the lions used to make MTWL were hand raised from birth, and trained to interact with humans, Richardson is not going to abstain from continuing to interact with them in the future.
One of the fine art photos of the new Thor, already for sale.
Fans of the “Lion Whisperer” have already publicly in various comment threads made it clear that they’re willing to overlook the fact that Kevin Richardson participated in buying lion cubs from Ukutula, South Africa’s most notorious lion farm, which has repeatedly been connected to the canned hunting industry, because “at least these lions are safe now”. Yes, a few, special, white lion cubs will not grow up being handled by children and then get shot. Instead, they already grew up being handled by children, and now they’ll spend their entire lives being handled by Richardson. But what about the some 3,000 other, not-special, tawny lion cubs which were born in captivity in the years since Richardson helped buy the handful to make MTWL? The 3,000 other captive bred lions which either have already been killed within the canned hunting industry, or which will eventually meet that fate? How many more lion cubs were born due to the thousands of dollars that were put into the canned hunting industry by Richardson and those funding the purchase of lions for use in MTWL?
We’ve also already seen fans argue that Richardson “rescued” the lion cubs used in MTWL, and that whatever money was spent to buy them is negligible compared to what canned hunters spend. But that simply isn’t true.
White lions have been worth four or five times as much as tawny lions in the canned hunting industry for decades. Heck, the recent, and ongoing saga of Mufasa the white lion, who is being touted as so valuable that the government would rather auction him to hunters than sell him to those who would save him is based solely on the extreme value of male white lions within the canned hunting industry. So it’s simply not plausible that Richardson could secure the purchase of multiple male white lions from an established breeding farm for less than the fair market value of the same number of adult male white lions. Therefore the purchase of those cubs by Richardson is no less a participation in the canned hunting industry than hunters purchasing them for sport.
And honestly you could even argue that hunters would only exploit the lions once, when they bought and killed them. Richardson not only helped buy them, and use them in a feature length film, but he’ll be using them to “raise awareness” by interacting with them for the rest of their lives, over and over again.
There are distinct differences between “raising awareness” about an issue, and capitalizing off that issue for your own gain, but these differences are something Richardson has carefully endeavored to blur for his fans.
The fact is, canned hunting has been in the public eye since Richardson first started working for Lion Park, who was, at the time that Richardson worked for them (and continues to) participate in selling lions to canned hunting contacts.
The widely watched investigative program, “The Crook Report” which was known for undercover documentaries first exposed the true horrors of canned hunting to the worldwide public in 1997. In its segment on the matter (coverage begins at 11:30 in this video, but be warned, it is graphic) undercover reporters involved with The Cook Report’s investigation presented horrific video evidence, such as the killing of the Dark Lioness, who had been separated from her adolescent cubs only hours before the hunters who purchased her arrived. She was then butchered just feet from her watching cubs, shot twice by a paying hunter who sat comfortably inside a vehicle. Such was the documented atrocities of The Cook Report. (the canned lion hunting segment begins at 11:30 but again, it is GRAPHIC)
But the video evidence pertaining to canned lion hunting almost didn’t make it off the lion farms where it was filmed. The investigative reporters were locked behind the gates of one such farm, and trapped there by the angry owners who suspected that they’d been duped into allowing the wrong people to see their dirty secrets. Only quick thinking, and good luck allowed The Cook Report investigators to escape with their stomach churning evidence. Evidence which was then aired on international television, to dramatic effect.
Within days of The Cook Report’s release on television, 55,000 signatures had been gathered to protest the sport of canned hunting, and you must remember that in 1997 at the time The Cook Report aired, the internet was not the ubiquitous force it is today. Petitions were largely products of paper, and their creation something that required people to go out and actually participate in real life, rather than simply typing on their personal computers. It is clear that The Cook Report put the atrocities of canned lion hunting (as well as that of other animals) front and center for the world wide public to grasp and loathe.
But while The Cook Report was prompting hundreds of thousands of viewers to cringe and writhe upon viewing its documentation of canned lion hunting, Kevin Richardson was hiring on to work for a lion farm which actually participated in the industry that The Cook Report was working to expose. Over a decade later, in 2009, Richardson was still working for Lion Park, and even today professes to have been completely ignorant to the fact that Lion Park’s constant conveyor belt of captive-bred lions were handled by the public and then fed directly into the canned hunting industry. No one is born knowing everything. However, it boggles the mind to consider that a grown man who built his entire career working with lions within the confines of a lion farm, and within the world of the captive lion breeding industry, claims that he did so without actually understanding how lion farms, or captive breeding worked.
Those claims of ignorance become even more absurd when you take into the account that Richardson was at the center of many of Lion Park’s exploitive commercial endeavors. By his own account, Richardson took part in the filming of multiple for-profit ads, commercials, and staged ‘documentaries’ using the lions of Lion Park. In the case of White Lion, which began planning and production in 2005, Richardson was not only the producer, but also the head lion wrangler. It was Richardson who was charged with selecting and securing the over sixty (60) lions, ranging in age from small cubs to adults, which were used to make the movie. When it was decided to change the lions from regular tawny animals, to white lions, which would allow capitalization on the rise in interest of rare white lions, it was Richardson who had to come up with white lions to replace the tawny lions he’d already cast.
Since Lion Park only had one adult white lion, Letsatsi, and two younger white males, Thor, and Gandalf, Richardson was forced to “source” a pair of teenage white male lions from elsewhere. It’s never been specified where those lions came from, nor is it ever revealed what happened to them. We do know, however, that part of White Lion was filmed on the Entabeni Game Reserve. This is important because filming on White Lion was finished in late 2008, part of that filming of which took place at Entabeni Game Reserve, located in Limpopo Province, which is renown as the premier location for lion hunting.
In 2009, in Limpopo Province white lions fetched, on average, a price of $18,691 USD at auction, nearly five times the average price of $4,021 USD for a standard tawny lion. Just as the marketability of white lions to the larger public made them ideal for use in Richardson’s movie, White Lion, it also made them in high demand for canned hunters, driving up their auction price. To suggest that Richardson–who was smart enough to know that white lions would (and still do) sell to the public better than plain tawny lions, and smart enough to work with multiple lion farms which focused on the captive breeding of white lions, within a Province where white lions carried five times the market value of tawny lions as trophy animals–was not smart enough to understand that these same farms and Lion Park were participating in the canned hunting industry, is preposterous.
Likewise, the persistent claim that Richardson “saved” what lions he could from Lion Park when he left there, remains laughable. Aside from the fact that over the years since his supposed split with Rodney Fuhr, Lion Park’s owner in 2011, Richardson has alternately stated that he bought the lions, then stated that he had not been able to buy them until 2016, there is the question of which lions Richardson chose to take with him. Over 60 lions were used to film White Lion, but of those 60, the current location of only a small handful can be confirmed. Notably, Thor, and Gandalf, both white males, were saved/bought/adopted however you choose to frame it, by Richardson. Along with them, were several other lions whom Richardson had hand-raised from birth and/or had intimate, and useful relationships with.
In sharp contrast to Thor and Gandalf, the fate of Bruce and Bravo, the two teenage white lions used in White Lion, remains unknown. Letsatsi, though originally personally groomed by Richardson for months before filming so that he could be the proud star of the movie, was quickly discarded from the “Richardson pride” after he refused to perform on cue. Richardson had known Letsatsi for five full years before the filming of White Lion began, and knew that the lion was not ideal for what he was trying to force him to do.
Nevertheless, with the opportunity to promote the film at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Richardson needed a promotional clip, which included “the majestic Letsatsi, our star, striding through a wide-open expanse” (Richardson, Kevin, and Tony Park. Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. First Edition, Print. Page 202).
Photo from Richardson's autobiography.
According to Richardson’s own words:
“Letsatsi wasn’t a filming lion” something that Richardson had recognized early on, and which had been previously discussed. “Letsatsi had never enjoyed being loaded and driven around on trucks” but “he was our only adult white lion at the time and we just had to hope it would work out.” (Richardson, Kevin, and Tony Park. Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. First Edition, Print. Page 204)
So under Richardson’s direction, Letsatsi was loaded onto a truck, driven to a private filming location–where local media, photographers, and press had also been called so as to promote the movie–and then unloaded so that he could be forced to perform. Letsatsi, however, did what Richardson already feared he would do. He refused to perform. Instead, he walked off. The “majestic” white lion proceeded to “stride through a wide open expanse” for about five hours, refusing to acknowledge Richardson, or obey his commands. Eventually the lion was shot with a dart gun, sedated, and physically hauled home.
In Richardson’s words:
“I loved him to bits, but our relationship took a big strain that day, when all of a sudden he wanted to roam free. In fact, my five year relationship with him went down the toilet at that point.” (Richardson, Kevin, and Tony Park. Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. First Edition, Print. Page 204)
Richardson literally blamed a lion whom he already knew hated being driven around on trucks and forced to perform, for destroying their five year relationship. Later, Richardson admitted to having pushed Letsatsi, “harder and harder in the weeks leading up to his spectacular walkout” but blamed his position as producer for that pressure, claiming that if he’d only been responsible for wrangling the lions, and not getting the best shot, he wouldn’t have tried to force Letsatsi to perform.
The fact remains, however, that Richardson was, in fact, the head lion wrangler on White Lion, and Richardson did, in fact, choose to try and force Letsatsi to perform when he knew the lion was not comfortable, and had been overworked in the weeks prior. And once Richardson’s own actions had destroyed the five year relationship he had with the lion Letsatsi, he discarded that lion like the useless offal he was. After their break, Richardson could not work with Letsatsi, could not film with him, and thus could not market him. When Richardson parted ways with Rodney Fuhr, and left Lion Park behind, he also left Letsatsi. Although Richardson has always professed that his lions are his “family” and that he would never leave them behind, that commitment clearly only pertains to the “family” he can manipulate for filming and photos. Since Letsatsi could not be used in such a fashion, Richardson left him at Lion Park, where he has lived for the last ten years, siring litter after litter of cubs to be used for cub petting, and later, canned hunting.
Screenshot of Letsatsi taken this year at Lion Park.
This video from October of 2018 shows Letsatsi (housed with the two white lionesses supposedly responsible for a mauling, though it’s not clear what mauling, since the keeper simply refers to “the old park”)
Meanwhile, Thor (who ended up being the star of White Lion) and Gandalf, who were both much more amendable to Richardson’s control and influence, were “rescued” and taken to Richardson’s current sanctuary.
Taken from Richardson's autobiography. Thor was one of Richardson's most popular lions, and was featured in numerous photos and videos until his untimely death by lightning strike.
At the time that White Lion was released, Richardson claimed to hope that the movie would “give people second thoughts about participating in” canned hunts, saying that, “Canned hunting, in my opinion, is likened to fishing with dynamite in a pond and then calling yourself a fisherman.”
While making such statements in interviews pertaining to his movie, Richardson took a very different position in his own autobiography, saying “I don’t have a problem with people such as Dirk, the professional lion farmer, and hunter, breeding lions for hunting.” And “I don’t begrudge an ethical lion farmer making money out of lions, any more than I would think it wrong for a fair cattle farmer to sell his animals for slaughter.” (Richardson, Kevin, and Tony Park. Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. First Edition, Print. Pages 133-134).
Richardson’s only complaint was in facilities that offered cub-petting and then sold older animals into canned hunting (which is, perversely, something Lion Park has done for decades) because “That’s an example of where a lion hunting farm starts to come into my territory, and I don’t like it.” (Richardson, Kevin, and Tony Park. Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. First Edition, Print. Page 133)
In 2016, Richardson quietly edited these statements, and many more, from his autobiography, carefully reshaping his position to be firmly anti-lion farming, anti-cub petting, and anti-canned hunting. This revision of his autobiography coincides with the filming of Richardson’s current movie, Mia And The White Lion, which is being heavily advertised as yet another attempt to “raise awareness” about canned hunting.
But the 2018 release of Mia And The White Lion marks twenty years that Kevin Richardson has been working in the captive lion industry, using lions to film commercials, and make ad campaigns, and film movies, and talk an awful lot about how bad canned hunting is. And yet, Richardson is still willing to participate in the very industry he continues to insist he, and his Foundation, “fight against”.
In the last two decades, huge strides have been made in raising awareness about the captive lion breeding, cub-petting, and canned hunting industries. From investigative reporting like that carried out by The Cook Report, to the next breakthrough documentary Blood Lions, to the more questionable, but very effective recently dramatized plight of Mufasa the white lion, media outlets have, for the past two decades, embraced the understanding the canned hunting is deplorable, and breeding lions in captivity is not going to solve the problems of wild lions. There are now watch lists that those who wish to volunteer in South Africa can reference in order to assure they apply to reputable foundations which do not participate in the canned hunting industry.
Yet Kevin Richardson has not evolved along with this growing understanding of the exploitation of captive lions. Although he has spoken (for years) about the need to raise awareness about canned hunting, and the desire to ban canned hunting, Richardson has not made any move to push legislation on a governmental level, which would help stymie the massive reservoir from whence canned hunting draws its seemingly endless supply of lions, both tawny and white. A ban on cub petting and lion-walking has been discussed at length, but Richardson did not add his voice to the matter. Interactions were even briefly banned at Lion Park, but then quickly resumed. Captive breeding to supply the cubs needed for cub petting is another area of possible regulation on which Richardson has never spoken. Of course, Richardson’s silence regarding a ban on captive breeding, and cub-petting of lions, might well be one borne of self-preservation. After all, if it were to become illegal for Richardson to interact with his lions, if such were to be viewed as bad form, then where would Richardson end up? He is famous for little more than his own lion interactions, and his constant rhetoric about “raising awareness” about canned hunting. And if there were a ban on the captive breeding of lions, where would Richardson secure his next batch of lions, to make his next movie?
When viewed objectively, Richardson as “the face of lion conservation and the anti-canned hunting movement” is a mirage which cannot be sustained. And one which is an unconscionable slight to those who have genuinely carried lion conservation and the anti-canned hunting movement forward.
While groups like The Cook Report were going undercover to expose the horrors of canned lion hunting, and people like Ian Michler, of Blood Lions were penning articles which addressed conservation, and the issues facing lions in South Africa during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kevin Richardson was embedding himself in a commercial lion farm, staging “documentaries” using captive bred and hand raised lions, and putting out Go-Pro videos of himself interacting with captive, hand raised and trained lions.
In the mid 2000s to 2010, while National Parks like Kruger, and other conservation organizations were covering the move to ban canned hunting in Africa, and publishing articles which warned against interacting with captive lions and encouraged the public to take responsibility and action, Richardson was conspiring to undertake, and then proceeding to engage in filming a feature length movie which capitalized on the rarity and mystic of white lions, using some 60 captive bred lions, with Lion Park who participated in the canned hunting that everyone else was trying to get banned. Richardson also wrote and publish his autobiography, which covered his life spent interacting with captive bred lions, at Lion Park, which actively supported the cub petting and canned hunting industries.
In the wake of his own autobiography’s success, and amidst a growing fan base, and a growing stable of sponsors, Richardson attempted to open his own lion park, Kingdom Of the White Lion, with Rodney Fuhr (although Richardson claimed to have cut ties with Fuhr in 2011) The venture was short-lived, and by 2013, Richardson was in court fighting with his new partner, Alan Friedland (some accounts state that Richardson left Fuhr, and opened Kingdom Of the White Lion with Friedland, but since part of White Lion was filmed at the KOWL location, and that movie was funded by Fuhr, this seems unlikely) As recently as 2015, at least one article claimed that Richardson was “petrified” that he was going to be thrown in jail after he claimed that he had no money to pay the debts he accrued in his failed venture and court fight with Friedland.
Despite such legal woes, by 2015, while such acclaimed documentaries as Blood Lions were hitting the airways, exposing the canned hunting industry with new resolve to end it (and directly linking both Lion Park where Richardson had worked for over a decade, and Ukutula lion farm to the canned hunting industry) Richardson was already engaged in yet another feature length movie endeavor. Having been approached by director Gilles de Maistre with the scheme of making singular movie that would contain real white lions, interacting with real children, Richardson happily signed on to the project. By the time Blood Lions was released, Richardson had already helped de Maistre hold casting calls for children at Ukutula Lodge lion farm (breeders of “rare” white lions) where the child actors were allowed to play with cubs and interact with them. Based on the children’s behavior, Richardson helped select the human stars of the movie. Richardson and de Maistre then revisited Ukutula lion farm in order to secure a number of male white lion cubs which would be used in the making of the movie, which at the time, was being called Charlie The White Lion (though readers will note that on some pages of the now deleted website, the movie name was changed to Mia And The White Lion before the website was deleted).
After the release of Blood Lions, and the public outrage over the killing of Cecil the lion, and with himself involved in the production of a movie that was framed to be anti-lion farming, and anti-canned hunting, Richardson revisited his autobiography, and removed large portions of it. Removed passages include addressment of lion farms which Richardson states he does not have a problem with them (cited above) as well as passages that criticized those who question his own interactions, and lion captivity in general.
“Some people say I shouldn’t be domesticating my lions, but I say that is rubbish. I enrich their lives”
“What angers me about the debate over animals in captivity is that it’s been hijacked by a small number of people at the extreme end of the spectrum. The die-hard greenies want to end any form of captivity,”
“Lions exist in captivity for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is education. Even if I stopped working in television I would want to bring school groups to see my animals,”
“Lions are kept in captivity at facilities such as the Lion Park for tourism purposes.”
I see no problem with any of the above reasons for keeping lions in captivity as long as the lions are well cared for and happy.”
(Richardson, Kevin, and Tony Park. Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. First Edition, Print. Pages 107-109).
In addition to the entire removal of passages like those from which the above quotes were taken, Richardson also removed all capitalization of the Lion Park in reference to his place of work, allowing readers to question whether or not he is referring to the Lion Park owned by Rodney Fuhr featured in the movie Blood Lions as a participant of canned hunting. After the redactions and editing of his autobiography (which has never been publicly declared, and which is mentioned only in one single sentence within the Introduction of the book) Richardson and his PR folks began promoting his biography again, with Richardson once more making the circuit of public speaking engagements, his presentations now carefully anti-cub petting, anti-lion farming, anti-captivity.
This reconstruction of his position came at a fortunate time, as it was shortly after the release of his edited autobiography that groups like CWW began questioning the ethics of the movie Charlie the White Lion, questioning the ethics of Richardson to participate in making the movie, questioning the ethics of purchasing lions cubs to be raised by hand, by children for the making of the movie.
To date, neither Richardson nor de Maistre have ever responded to any of the articles CWW published discussing Charlie the White Lion. However, after we published several articles about it, the entire website, which had detailed the production of the movie, was deleted. The website can now only be accessed via the Way Back Machine, where one can enter the original address www.charliethewhitelion.com and be taken to the cached pages. While photos are gone, all the text remains. On social media, Charlie the White Lion ceased to exist until de Maistre began using the hashtag #Miaandthewhitelion. No new website for the movie was ever made, nor has any information regarding the production of the movie, now renamed Mia And The White Lion, been made public since CWW first began questioning the ethics of the movie.
Richardson continued his promotions against canned hunting, and cub petting on his own social media pages. He also continued producing his YouTube videos of himself interacting with his personal lions. Many of these videos were filmed not on Richardson’s sanctuary, but out on the expanses of the Dinokeng Reserve–which means that wild lions who live on the reserve were forced out of the area so that Richardson’s captive lions could be filmed there instead. Such activity ended abruptly, in early 2018, however, when one of Richardson’s captive lions left the open area of the Dinokeng, and entered an area of Richardson’s sanctuary which was supposedly safe, and once there, fatally mauled a young woman visiting the sanctuary with a friend who was interviewing the camp manager.
The only public statement Richardson ever made regarding it placed the woman “outside the car”, while assuring that he had properly notified everyone that lions would be out of their enclosures on the (Dinokeng) Reserve, and specified the he and his colleague had “assessed the landscape for other big 5 animals”. Outside of the direct quote from Richardson, the statement made on his social media pages went on to claim that before leaving the reserve the two visitors had stopped to take photographs.
The legally precise, and carefully worded statement made by Richardson's social media pages.
This careful press release concisely placed full responsibility for the fatality on the dead girl herself, for being out of her vehicle on a game reserve, and resulted in a massive online response wherein literally thousands of commenters asserted that the dead young woman actually deserved to be killed and that Richardson was completely absolved of responsibility, despite that it was his own lion who had committed the fatal mauling, and despite that just weeks prior, during an “Ask Meg” video segment, Richardson had stated that if one his lions were to encounter a stranger they would probably attack them.
With the fatal mauling as minimized in the public eye as possible (investigations by authorities are still ongoing) Richardson went on to announce the creation of the Kevin Richardson Foundation (though the foundation has actually been registered for a number of years) and then proceeded to unveil various “projects” throughout the year, each carefully structured to present a firm stance toward conserving, for the first time ever, wild lions. With his LandForLions campaign (though this first fundraiser is actually to buy his own sanctuary, where his captive lions live) Richardson has done what he does best, con the public in to believing that he’s interested in saving whatever it is they want him to be interested in saving.
The fine print of the #landforlions Thundafund stating that the money will actually be used to buy the land where his sanctuary is located. The Thundafund notably advertises the camp where one of Richardson's lion fatally mauled a young woman as a reward for donations of $14,400 USD and up, which contradict's Richardson's public statement insinuating that the girl's death occurred outside his sanctuary.
Richardson’s ability to evade responsibility, or accountability remains his most astounding feature.
Now Richardson–who began his career at a lion farm that supports captive breeding, cub petting, and canned hunting, and who has for two decades interacted with captive bred lions for profit–is enjoying the company of Royals, during the Monaco premier of Mia And The White Lion, a commercial movie made, using captive bred white lions, bought from a known lion farm that supports captive breeding of lions, cub petting, and canned hunting, and for which Richardson trained children to interact with captive lions.
And Richardson still has the gall to say the only reason he made this movie is to “bring awareness to canned hunting, and cub petting”.
Mia and The White Lion has all the earmarks of becoming an instant classic, at least amongst the white lion-craving public. But considering that the entire thing has been made in collusion with the very industries it’s supposed to deride, we hold no hope that it will convey anything more than the romanticized story of a beautiful girl, and her gorgeous, noble beast friend. A real live beauty and the beast. No resulting message can erase the hypocrisy of how the movie was made.
“It’s a film for all age groups,” said Richardson, “with every ingredient to be a runaway hit. And the cubs will pull at the heart strings of the most seasoned moviegoer.”
Oh, oops, pardon, that’s what Richardson was quoted as saying about White Lion, before it’s release back in 2009.
But hey, why change a good thing? Captive white lions sold like hotcakes back then, they’ve sold in the years since then, and they’re only going to sell better now. Especially with the edition of an attractive young girl, and the message of saving lions everywhere attached to it.
Yes indeed, captive lions are more valuable than ever before. Thank you for showcasing that fact, Mr. Richardson.
***************** ADDENDUM***************
Which looks extremely similar to the set up of Richardson’s sanctuary:
left a comment suggesting that people should question where Richardson obtained the white lion cubs that were used in the making of Mia And The White Lion. She pointed out that they’d been bought from a breeding facility which is renown for selling to canned hunting. When asked by another commenter if she had any evidence to back up her statement, she replied, stating that she had already posted a link to evidence, but that it had been deleted. She went on to say that originally, it was KR’s own PR person who had named the farm (Ukutula). In response to this comment by the question-raiser, the Kevin Richardson Facebook Page actually directly addressed her, declaring that “It’s no secret the lions were purchased from a cub petting facility” and then went on to attempt to justify the purchase by insisting that they’d been saved, and “will live our their lives at our sanctuary.”
The comments of the question-raiser have since been deleted from the comment feed.
The reason this is important, is because just a few days ago, Paula Kahumbu, of Wildlife Direct posted about attending the world premier of Mia And The White Lion. Although Ms. Kahumbu pointed out that the movie “portrays a romantic image of Africa that simply does into exist” inasmuch as its romanticism of Africa (true) she also suggested that others “watch this film and tell me what you are going to do”. about the problem of canned hunting. Quickly, comments appeared, expressing surprise that Kahumbu would support a film which used lions that had been purchased from within the very industry the movie supposedly derides. Kahumba replied thoughtfully, and we’ve put a screenshot of that reply below, underlining the most important part for easy viewing.
A sanctuary in Timbavati? Though Kahumu doesn’t specify who, exactly, made this claim, she did clearly indicate that she spoke to both Kevin Richardson and Gilles de Maistre, and that she was told that the lions were in Timbavati. Yet in the same time as the comments on Kahumu’s FB page, Richardson’s page posted the above photo of the human and lion stars of Mia And The White Lion at a location that closely resembles Richardson’s sanctuary. And then under that photo the Richardson Page commented, confirming both that the lions had been bought from Ukutula lion farm, and that they would live out their entire lives on Richardson’s sanctuary. Likewise, this screenshot from one of the star’s Instagram page clearly indicates that the cub she’s shown holding is now an adult and living with Richardson.
And within the same time that this Instagram photo was posted by one of the actresses involved, the Richardson FB page also commented on a post about the movie stating in response to a question about where the lions in the movie would live, and again state firmly that the lions will live out there lives at Richardson’s sanctuary.
This, of course, directly contradicts the answer given at the premier of the movie, where it was stated that the lions were living on a reserve in Timbavati, which is famed for hosting a population of white lions. So which is the true story?