Disney offered a 13-year-old $2 million to sing in The Lion King—his mom took $100k plus royalties instead. He’s still getting paid 32 years later

Becoming an overnight millionaire is every teenager’s dream.

But when Disney offered 13-year-old Jason Weaver $2 million to sing as young Simba in The Lion King —his mom told them no.

“When they offered that deal, it was really just to take this money and go,” Weaver once told VladTV in a 2019 interview , that’s currently going viral on social media.

“I think they knew and forecasted that they were gonna make a sh-t ton of money.” It was a huge offer for a kid from Chicago.

Weaver says his biggest paycheck until then was about $80,000, for playing a young Michael Jackson.

“That amount of money to an average middle-class family in Chicago in the early 90s… that’s something,” he said.

But his mom and manager, Marilyn “Kitty” Haywood, wasn’t dazzled.

Instead, she negotiated for royalties and about $100,000 upfront.

And three decades on, the now 47-year-old I Just Can’t Wait to Be King singer is still getting paid—and has since made more than the $2 million he rejected.

“If she hadn’t done that, that would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career,” he added.

Why Weaver’s mom turned down $2 million from Disney for The Lion King As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait.

Weaver’s mom said an upfront check could be the last he ever saw from the film.

She’d noticed something: Disney kept re-releasing its old classics, decade after decade—a habit that began with the 1944 reissue of Snow White .

She’d also taken stock that Disney was on a roll: the casting call came hot off the heels of the success of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.