That Director Jon Favreau is all set to transform one of the most favourite and cherished animated classic, ‘Jungle Book’ into a live action feature presentation is old news, but what left the audience awestruck recently at the D-23 Expo was the first official poster release.
The Jungle Book is an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s novel of the same name; it follows a young boy named Mowgli (Neel Sethi) on his journey from being raised by wolves to becoming the king of the jungle. The live action adaptation also features the voice cast of Idris Elba as the tiger villain Shere Khan, Scarlett Johansson as the slinky serpent Kaa, Lupita Nyong’o as the mother wolf Raksha, Christopher Walken as King Louie, and Ben Kingsley as the black leopard Bagheera and Bill Murray as Baloo.
Disney’s president of production Sean Bailey spoke about how The Jungle Book could not have been brought to life earlier, as every aspect needed to be presented in a photorealistic way. Favreau was chosen to direct because the studio needed a filmmaker “who could get the nuance of the source material and the story’s legacy in Disney history.”
The Jungle Book is not entirely CGI, there are live-action settings and sequences, but the animals are entirely animated. The only charter that shall be ‘Live’ would be of Mowgli’s played by newcomer Neel Sethi.
Apart from this one, even Warner Bros is also working on a gritty adaptation of the book directed by Andy Serkis also titled Jungle Book. The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by English author Rudyard Kipling which was first published in magazines in 1893 -94.
Favreau’s ‘The Jungle Book’ opens in 3D on 15 April, 2016.