A little late to the party here, but I have faith. Lots and lots of faith. Of course, it could go terribly wrong, but this is the same man that directed the Jungle Book. I thought the Jungle Book was good: really REALLY good. In fact, it's my favourite movie of all time. I think people who shrug it off as a "soulless" adaptation didn't really take the time to think about it from a thematic and critical standpoint, devoid of how much they liked singing along to "Bare Necessities" as a kid or "Waah my childhood!" It was a perfect combination of the book and the animated movie, slandering neither and being respectful to both, and IMO improving on their thematic standing overall (Mowgli should stay in the Jungle, at least in this movie).
Now given that Lion King was one of the "perfect" 90's Disney movies, with no prior source material (Kimba notwithstanding), it's definitely an entirely different beast from the animated Jungle Book: but it's not perfect. The treatment of the hyenas and the fact of lions being the "King" has always been under question, the second act kind of drags and the theming is a bit wonky in places. Not to say that Jon Favreau should be going in to "fix" all of these (that's what made Beauty and the Beast so horrible), but he should at least acknowledge the major ones. This isn't going to be a complete rehash of the original folks, this is reportedly an entirely different story, which I think is a good thing.
Of course it can never please everyone: if it goes too far from the original, people won't like it, but if sticks too close to it, people will really not like it. I do agree that it would be better for Disney to go back to making original content again, but hey, the remakes sell, and no amount of boycotting is going to change that.