I’ll admit, when I first heard about The Lion Guard, a spin-off of the The Lion King made exclusively for Disney Jr., I was skeptical. Actually, I rolled my eyes and moved on with my life because I just knew I would not be the slightest bit interested in it. Then the first trailer dropped.

Far from looking “Not that bad,” The Lion Guard actually looks halfway decent. Maybe even good? The animation definitely looks great; to the untrained eye, it’s almost cinema quality. And the writing definitely sounds like it’s better than I feared.

The Lion Guard will feature the return of voice actors James Earl Jones and Ernie Sabella as Mufasa and Pumbaa, respectively, with Kevin Schon reprising his role of Timon from the previous animated series. Rob Lowe and Gabrielle Union will take over as Simba and Nala, with Max Charles starring as their son and youngest child, Kion. Joshua Rush will voice Kion’s best friend Bunga, a honey badger, with Atticus Shaffer as Ono, an egret, Diamond White as Fuli, a cheetah, and Dusan Brown as Beshte, a hippo.

The show will debut with an hour-long television movie in November called The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar and the series itself will premiere in 2016. I will definitely watch this November, and I think a lot more people than I originally assumed will watch as well. Let’s hope the show lives up to the quality of the preview!

What did you think of this Lion Guard preview? Will you tune in this November?

Edited by: Hannah Wilkes