Roar (1981)

Interesting facts

• Budget: $17M
• Filmed in: California

Roar is a 1981 American adventure comedy film written and directed by Noel Marshall. Its plot follows Hank, a naturalist who lives on a nature preserve in Africa with lions, leopards, tigers, and other big cats. When his family visits him, they are instead confronted by the group of animals. The film stars Marshall as Hank, his real-life wife Tippi Hedren as his wife Madeleine, with Hedren's daughter Melanie Griffith and Marshall's sons John and Jerry Marshall in supporting roles.

Production

Roar was conceived by husband and wife Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren in 1969. Marshall was Hedren's talent agent while she starred in Satan's Harvest, which was filmed in Mozambique. Near the film set, they came across an abandoned plantation house in Gorongosa National Park which had been overrun by a pride of lions, and were told by their bus guide and local residents that animal populations were becoming endangered due to poaching; this inspi…

It was an amazing thing to see: The lions were sitting in the windows, they were going in and out of the doors, they were sitting on the verandas, they were on the top of the Portuguese house, and they were in the front of the house [...] It was such a unique thing to see and we thought, for a movie, let us use the great cats as our stars.

Marshall and Hedren discussed the film with their family (Melanie Griffith, Joel, John, and Jerry Marshall), who liked the idea and agreed to participate as actors, except Joel, who preferred to be the art director and set decorator. Marshall and Hedren visited animal preserves in their free time and talked to lion experts. They learned they would have to film in the United States, as tame lions were rare in Africa.

Marshall wrote the first script for the project in the spring of 1970, and gave it the working title Lions; later, he changed it to Lions, Lions and More Lions. He also enlisted the assistance of actor and voice artist Ted Cassidy, with whom he had co-written and produced The Harrad Experiment. The original script allowed for up to thirty or forty trained lions.

Marshall and Hedren began keeping young lions that they had acquired from zoos and circuses in their house in Sherman Oaks. This was illegal as they did not secure permission from the authorities beforehand—though it was before the more stringent regulations of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The authorities discovered the animals in 1972 and ordered the family to remove them from the property.

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