Meet Kiros, Mads Mikkelsen's villainous pack leader of Disney's “Mufasa” prequel (exclusive)

Mikkelsen and director Barry Jenkins share everything you need to know (barring spoilers) about the big bad of the "Lion King" precursor.

Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins describes the origin story of Mufasa in mythic proportions. If The Lion King is a reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, then he reasons Mufasa: The Lion King, the upcoming film releasing in theaters this Dec. 20, is, in essence, a prequel to that play. And with such grandiose figures as young Mufasa (Aaron Pierre), an orphaned lion cub who would one day rule Pride Rock, and young Taka (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), who’s fated to become Scar, the Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk filmmaker needed a villain to match.

Enter Kiros, voiced by Mads Mikkelsen (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny).

“I was talking to Jeff Nathanson, the screenwriter who wrote the original draft. He felt like there was something really interesting in learning how these characters became the iconic identities we've known for 25 years,” Jenkins tells Entertainment Weekly, taking a break from the film's sound mix. “Kiros was a part of almost creating this character [Mufasa], almost like there's an echo, and the voice that comes back has to slap off something. So this idea of this character was just as interesting and, in some ways, as powerful as a character like Mufasa.”

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Nathanson’s story for Mufasa: The Lion King is framed by a tale told to Simba (Donald Glover) and Nala’s (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter) daughter, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), by Rafiki (John Kani), Timon (Billy Eichner), and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen). As an orphaned cub wandering alone in the wild, Kiara’s grandfather meets and befriends Taka, the heir to a royal bloodline. They’re destined to go on a coming-of-age journey, one that will intersect with Kiros, the white-haired lion seen in EW’s exclusive photos from the film.

“He's a great leader,” Mikkelsen says of his character. “He's one of the lions who's protecting his pride. And like most lions, he does believe that the best way of defense is offense. It's a brutal world out there. So, in his world, it's better to move before the other guys move. You could probably say that he's set his target to a bigger piece of the land than the one he has already."

Kiros and the lions in his pack look visually distinct from the rest of the animals. That stems from a story element Nathanson conceived in his original drafts of the script. "This idea of these lions with this genetic mutation, which actually exists out in the wild," Jenkins says. "So that's why he looks different than the other lions."

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"His pack is his pack, meaning that they believe in what they're doing," Mikkelsen elaborates. "They believe in their hurt, they believe in the survival of their genes, and they see everybody else as enemies to their survival. You will have doubters in there, as well. You have people that have less confidence, who are just going along with the projects, who might ask themselves questions in the dark of the night but never say it out loud."

In some ways, Jenkins, who's conscious of safeguarding spoilers, believes Kiros foreshadows the Scar that Disney lovers have known since the original Lion King 30 years ago. He saw it through the lens of nature versus nurture. "As children, we're often responding to every bit of stimulus we have. So for a character like Taka, he only knows the parents that he has, Eshe [Thandiwe Newton] and Obasi [Lennie James]," the filmmaker explains. "Then here's this lion, Kiros, who also enters everyone's orbit. That's an example of a certain kind of masculinity, a certain kind of leadership, a certain kind of power. And it can be intoxicating."

As with the rest of the cast, who recorded their lines in front of close-up cameras that provided visual effects artists with facial references for the animals' CG animation, the team translated certain qualities of Mikkelsen into Kiros. Jenkins notes that two of the actors' teeth look like little vampire fangs, which then also became a part of the Kiros design.

Related: Mufasa: The Lion King trailer highlights a new side of Mufasa and Scar's brotherhood

They wanted this pack leader to resemble a man amongst boys. "We started looking at these athletes who are larger than life," Jenkins says while listing off sports figures like football player Calvin Johnson, formerly of the Detroit Lions, basketball icon LeBron James, and baseball superstars Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez and José Canseco. "Then here's Mufasa. So, what did Kobe Bryant look like during his first season in the NBA? It was those sort of intellectual frameworks."

Then there was the voice. The director was searching for an actor with a specific kind of voice for Kiros, and he describes Mikkelsen's timbre as "a very guttural, almost like a rat-tat-tat kind of thing." He notes, "It sounds like a rumble in the same way that a lion's roar can sound like a rumble."

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The sound design department then found real lion noises to complement Mikkelsen's specific register. The team tapped Harry Cohen, a semi-retired and widely renowned sound designer, to work on Mufasa: The Lion King, bringing with him what Jenkins calls "this huge library of lion sounds" that Cohen recorded himself back in the 1970s. "He's been recording forever," Greg Russell from the film's sound team remarks. "He has all of his libraries archived and organized in a way, and he remembers where things are."

Related: Barry Jenkins says Mufasa prequel will have 'a ton of familiar faces,' 'wonderful musical numbers'

And because Mufasa: The Lion King is a musical, Mikkelsen sings, too! "This will be my first attempt at singing as an actor," he says. "Before I was an actor, I did sing, but I was always in the choir. I have a couple of songs. It was nerve-wracking, but it was super fun to do it."

"He makes the song delicious, is I think the best word I can say," Jenkins adds. "He was just down for whatever."

The pair refrain from saying too much about Mikkelsen's musical numbers, but it's fair to say Kiros won't be "Hakuna Matata"-ing around the Pride Lands. "When you hear the first song, at least, you realize we're not dealing with a good guy," Mikkelsen says. "But then again, when you listen to the text and why he's so bitter and why his heart is so broken, you do understand that it is a lion in a lot of pain, and there's a reason for why he's there. He took the wrong path. 'When they go low, we go lower.' That's what he did. As opposed to Mufasa, 'When they go low, we go high.' So there's always a choice. You can take the high road or the low road, and he took the other one."