Jon Favreau’s Jungle Book Cast Gains Bill Murray and More

Posted by Ben Huber on Aug 3, 2014 in Cinema

Jon Favreau has been hard at work on a Jungle Book live-action and CGI hybrid film for Disney. To be honest, I wasn’t really keeping an eye on it, but the cast has steadily been increasing in both size and talent, so now I’m starting to pay attention. Bill Murray has been the most recent addition to the cast, playing Baloo. There’s some power casting! Along with Murray will be Idris Elba as Shere Khan, Christopher Walken as King Louie, Giancarlo Esposito as Akela, Ben Kingsley as Bagheera, Lupita Nyong’o as Raksha, Scarlett Johansson as Kaa, and as Mowgli, newcomer Neel Sethi. Wow! Talk about a star-studded cast. I really hope that the complete package turns out well, because otherwise it would be a shame to squander so many talented folks! Read more…

Tags: Jungle Book

Andy Serkis’ Jungle Book Won’t “Shy Away From Its Darkness”

Posted by Ben Huber on Mar 31, 2014 in Cinema

You may have heard the mo-cap extraordinaire Andy Serkis, famous for his work as Gollum and King Kong, would be making the jump to the director’s chair. He’ll be doing the Jungle Book for Warner Bros. (and Jon Favreau is doing one too… for Disney), and rather than take a family-friendly approach, it sounds like he wants to be a bit more realistic and faithful to the book. He said, “What I love about the screen adaptation by Steve and Callie Kloves is it’s very truthful to the original book; it doesn’t shy away from its darkness.” I’ll be interested to see how it turns out, especially given Serkis’ expertise with making CGI animals appear as realistic as possible. It could be neat! Read more…

Tags: Andy Serkis, Jungle Book