The Jungle Book: Origins, one of two Hollywood films in production that re-tells Rudyard Kipling's famous Mowgli stories, will now not hit theaters until 2017. Warner Bros. pushed the movie off the 2016 calendar on Thursday.
The date change showed up on Box Office Mojo’s schedule. The studio had scheduled the move for Oct. 21, 2016, but it will now be released a year later on Oct. 6, 2017.
In its place, Warner Bros. will release Geostorm, a movie directed by Independence Day writer Dean Devlin and starring Gerard Butler, on Oct. 21, 2016.
Jungle Book: Origins will mark Serkis’ feature film directing debut. The motion capture extraordinaire - who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Caesar in the new Planet of the Apes films - was hired to direct in March. The voice cast will include Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Naomie Harris and Benedict cumberbatch. Rohan Chad will play Mowgli.
The date change will at least give the film even more distance from Disney’s own Jungle Book movie, which is being directed by Iron Man’s Jon Favreau. That film will hit theaters on Oct. 9. 2015.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping both studios from making Jungle Book movies at the same time since Kipling’s stories are in the public domain.
image courtesy of Nancy Rivera/ACE/INFphoto.com