Disney's The Jungle Book Sequel Planned

Disney’s The Jungle Book Sequel Planned

Published

10 years ago

April 16, 2016

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Favreau and Co May Return to The Jungle

♦It only came out yesterday (Friday) at the cinema in many places but Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book is already getting a follow-up, according to an exclusive piece over at the Hollywood Reporter…

Disney believes that one of the bare necessities for its movie slate is more “Bare Necessities.”Days before the studio opens its live-action take on The Jungle Book, Disney is already putting together the pieces for a sequel.Jon Favreau and Justin Marks, who respectively directed and wrote the movie, are in negotiations to return in their roles for a follow-up. Favreau also will produce. Brigham Taylor, who produced the upcoming movie with Favreau, will also return.

The movie, which unbelievably was shot entirely on stages in Los Angeles, adapts the Rudyard Kipling-authored stories that tell of Mowgli, the human boy raised by wolves and who befriends various jungle animals. Disney released a animated take of the material in 1967 that also featured such classic songs as “Trust in Me,” “I Wanna Be Like You” and “The Bare Necessities.”

The latest pic, a live-action/CG hybrid, assembled an impressive voice cast that includes Bill Murray as Baloo the bear, Ben Kingsley as Begheera the panther, Scarlet Johansson as Kaa the serpent and Lupita Nyong’o as Raksha the mother wolf, among others. Newcomer Neel Sethi makes his feature debut as Mowgli.

Kipling wrote many a Mowgli tale and Disney plans to dig deep into the source material.

The studio has every reason to be high on the new movie. Jungle Book is already generating very strong reviews and currently stands at 100 percent on review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.

While it opens Friday in North America (as well as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K., China, Brazil and Mexico), Jungle Book had an strong rollout this past weekend in a handful of markets in Asia and Latin America. It brought in $31.7 million and opened at No. 1 in all territories. India was the standout with a $8.4 million gross, registering the second-highest industry opening for a Western release there.

Disney’s live-action division, led by president Sean Bailey, has been striking box-office gold with its strategy of reimagining its animated classics into live-action films for contemporary audiences. The studio first took on its fairy tales such as Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent and Cinderella and is now expanding that repertoire. On top of Jungle Book, Disney has Pete’s Dragon, starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Robert Redford, due in August. (It also has Alice in Wonderland sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass set to open in May and Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson slated for a March 2017 release.)