Happy Birthday, The Lion King

It’s the ciiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiife!

Today the Broadway production of The Lion King celebrates its sixteenth birthday. Sweet sixteen! And it feels like only yesterday that everyone in the world fell in love with the show’s crazy, puppet-y brand of awesomeness.

He’s gonna be a mighty king! (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Some fun birthday facts:

-Today’s anniversary show is also the musical’s 6,660th performance. (Spoooooky.)

-The show is the highest-grossing musical in Broadway history.

-Just how much money are we talking? More than $5 billion. FIVE BILLION DOLLARS.

-Next month, The Lion King will zoom past Les Misérables to become the fourth longest-running show on Broadway.

-It has played on every continent save Antarctica.

-And a LOT of people have felllllt the looooove toniiiiight: Since its premiere in 1997, more than 70 million people have seen 21 different productions of The Lion King around the world.

Happy birthday, Lion King! (And special birthday shout-outs to my personal faves, the adorable baby Simba puppet and those wicked cool giraffe-people.) Oh we just can’t WAIT for 17!

Seriously, those giraffe-people are the best. (Photo by Joan Marcus)