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Exhibits that offer a glimpse behind the scenes at films like the “Harry Potter” movies are becoming increasing common as part of so-called experiential marketing efforts by the Hollywood studios. Now, an entertainment giant with a major presence on stage as well as in film wants to find out if such exhibits could stimulate interest in Broadway shows.

The Disney Theatrical Group division of the Walt Disney Company will present in Midtown Manhattan a temporary exhibit about “The Lion King,” the musical that is marking its 15th anniversary on Broadway. The free “pop-up” exhibition, called Inside “The Lion King,” is to open on Saturday at 1095 Sixth Avenue at 42nd Street and run through Dec. 16.

The cost of the exhibit, including a marketing campaign to promote it, is estimated at $500,000.

The exhibit’s home is not too far from where “The Lion King” is playing, the Minskoff Theater on West 45th Street. The site, a vacant retail space on the ground floor of an office building across from Bryant Park, has been home to many pop-up exhibits and stores, including for BMW, the National Football League and Target.

Inside “The Lion King” will fill about 5,000 square feet of space with items from the Broadway and road productions of the show, including costumes, masks, puppets and sets. Some of them will be visible to passers-by through several windows.

There will be displays and touch screens presenting early concept materials and sketches used in developing the show, which opened on Broadway in November 1997, including from the director, Julie Taymor. Visitors can attend workshops at the exhibit on Dec. 8, 9, 15 and 16 on subjects like music and design.

They will also be able to photograph themselves with items like a five-foot wildebeest mask, the image of the sun in the show that represents “the circle of life” and wax figures of two characters, Rafiki and Scar, that are on loan from Madame Tussauds.

Madame Tussauds is a sponsor of the exhibit, along with WPLJ-FM radio, New York magazine, Xerox and WABC-TV, also owned by Disney. The Disney Theatrical Group is estimating that 75,000 people will visit the exhibit.

The anniversary of “The Lion King” started the conversation about the exhibit, said David Schrader, executive vice president and managing director at the Disney Theatrical Group, who has a scale model of what it is to look like in his office in the New Amsterdam Theater.

“We’re on the hunt for ideas that are nontraditional, that explain more about what’s in the show,” Mr. Schrader said, and the notion of “a walk-through experience” in a large space was intriguing. He credited Andrew Flatt, senior vice president for marketing at the Disney Theatrical Group, with the idea for the exhibit.

There have been exhibits about “The Lion King” before, Mr. Schrader said, but they were “on a more limited scale,” citing one inside the National Geographic Store in London.

If the exhibit in Manhattan proves successful, he added, “we can imagine it in other markets.”

Mr. Schrader is working on the exhibit with a creative agency, Five 33, based in Los Angeles and London, which has collaborated with Disney on exhibits about the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and films directed by Tim Burton.

The goal in designing an exhibit for “The Lion King” is “bringing the artistry to the forefront,” said Emily Castel, chief executive of the Five 33 Group, and “being faithful to the vision of the creatives” involved in the musical.

So the way visitors enter the exhibit will be like walking through “the show curtain,” Ms. Castel said, as if they are “allowed to go backstage.”

Although the exhibit is meant to help sell tickets to “The Lion King,” Disney is playing down the commercial aspects. There will only be one item of merchandise on sale at the exhibit that is being created specifically for the exhibit, an Inside “The Lion King” T-shirt, priced at $30. (There will also be additional items on sale that are also on offer at the Minskoff Theater.)

Visitors will also be able to buy tickets to “The Lion King” at a kiosk on site, along with tickets to the two other Disney musicals on Broadway, “Newsies” and “Mary Poppins.”