| Corinne Heller-Ingraham 13. September 2015 – 10:20
Mowgli appears in a beautiful, lush jungle in a sneak peek video of Disney’s new live-action and CGI film, The Jungle Book.
Newcomer Neel Sethi is playing the character, a boy raised by wolves who communicates with animals. Several actors are portraying CGI-animated characters, including Scarlett Johansson (Kaa, a python), Idris Elba (Shere Khan, an evil tiger), Bill Murray (Mowgli’s friend Baloo, a bear), Ben Kingsley (Bagheera, a panther), Lupita Nyong’o (Raksha, a wolf and Mowgli’s adoptive mother) and Christopher Walken (King Louie, an Orangutan).
A short clip of The Jungle Book was posted on Disney’s Instagram page this weekend. It shows stunning jungle scenes—a river surrounded by vegetation and Mowgli standing on a mangled tree branch, covered in vines, in the middle of the jungle. Rustling ,or perhaps hissing, is also heard. A longer trailer is set for release on Monday.
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The 1967 animated film The Jungle Book, based on a collection of stories by British author Rudyard Kipling, remains one of the most beloved Disney movies of all time.
The new flick marks the latest of the company’s adaptations of its popular animated films, following the likes of Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella and Maleficent, the prequel to Sleeping Beauty. Disney is currently working on a live-action version of its musical masterpiece Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson, The Hobbit‘s Luke Evans and Downton Abbey alum Dan Stevens.
Jon Favreau is directing Disney’s The Jungle Book, which is set for release on April 15, 2016.
“It is going to be a very different experience in that it’s much more visceral,” Kingsley told E! News in August at Disney’s D23 convention. “You feel the threat of the jungle, as well as the beauty of the jungle. You feel the power of those beasts as well as the story that they have to tell. You feel that there is something very muscular and vivid about those animals.”
“When the elephants came onto the screen, the audience gasped because they do look like a herd of elephants,” he said. “You cannot imagine that that was created in a laboratory. It’s almost impossible to believe that you’re watching computer-generated images.”
Warner Bros. Pictures is also producing a Jungle Book movie titled Jungle Book: Origins, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Andy Serkis. That film is set to hit theaters in 2017.
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