The next live-action movie based on an animated classic from Disney has nothing to do with princesses and castles. The Jungle Book, which is being directed by Iron Man’s Jon Favreau, is up next, although there’s more animation in it than live action footage.
Disney released a teaser for the film, which doesn’t hit theaters until April 15, 2016, today following a six-second Twitter teaser over the weekend. The footage reveals that the film is much like Life of Pi, where we have a single actor interacting with a plethora of CG characters. The animals are rendered to look as realistic as possible, but of course, real animals don’t talk.
The voices coming out of the animals should be incredibly familiar. Scarlett Johansson, who is voicing the snake Kaa, is the narrator of the teaser. Other voices featured in the film are Christopher Walken, Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong’o, Idris Elba, Bill Murray and Giancarlo Esposito.
Mowgli will be played by newcomer Neel Sethi.
The Jungle Book is based on the Rudyard Kipling stories, which are in the public domain. The stories inspired Disney’s 1967 animated classic. Warner Bros. is also working on Jungle Book: Origins, which will open in 2017.
Check out the teaser below:
screenshot from YouTube trailer