‘Changed for good’ – Wicked movie features CGI wild animals

Frankie Osuch, Policy Support Officer

Have you heard of the movie Wicked? Recently released, the musical fantasy tells the magical story of the Witches of Oz and, thanks to ‘movie magic’, features many amazing wild animals. This includes species threatened with extinction, such as a shoebill stork, a snow leopard, giraffe, secretary bird, proboscis monkey and even a captive lion cub who is returned to the wild. In a wonderful way, these computer-generated animal characters demonstrate how modern filmmaking has ‘changed for good’ and no longer relies on the use of real wild animals on set.

As you can imagine, TV and film sets can be stressful environments for wild animals. They can experience highly unnatural conditions, including proximity to people, inappropriate temperature, bright lighting and noise. Scenes are seldom successfully filmed in one take, so animals may endure prolonged exposure to such conditions during the filming process.

When you factor in how inappropriately they can be housed when waiting to be filmed, plus being transported to and from the filming location, animals may well be subjected to chronic stress. Social species may also be separated from their social group for significant periods of time, adding to their stress.

As you may know, like Wicked, the 1966 film Born Free depicted a young lion being released back into the wild. However, Elsa, who is featured on our charity logo and whose true story inspires our work, was portrayed in the film using a number of real lions. It was their experience and relationships with animals on the set of Born Free, as well as An Elephant Called Slowly, that led our Co-Founders Dame Virgina McKenna and Bill Travers MBE to the realisation that wild animals should never be used for entertainment, and the founding of Zoo Check, the charity that evolved into the Born Free Foundation.

Our understanding of animal welfare has increased significantly over recent decades and with that, public concern about the use of captive wild animals in entertainment has grown. Thankfully, with this change together with the development of technology, using CGI to portray wild animals in films and TV shows has become increasingly ‘popular’.

However, despite the 60 years that have passed since Born Free began filming, sadly some adverts, TV shows and films still opt to use real wild animal ‘actors’. Born Free’s vital work to end the exploitation of wild animals for entertainment continues.

I hope that in another 60 years’ time, TV and filmmakers will never consider using real wild animals on their busy sets, and such practices will be well and truly consigned to the history books. With computer-generated technology developing all the time and enabling increasingly more realistic portrayals of wild animals on screen, I think the future really is ‘unlimited’.

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Image credits: Elize Bezuidenhout, Unsplash (secretary bird); Sneha Cecil, Unsplash (lion)