Adapting its classic library of animated films to live-action blockbuster is becoming big business for Disney. Earlier this year, Cinderella hit theaters, following Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent, while remakes of Pinocchio, Mulan and Beauty and the Beast are in the works.
Up next is The Jungle Book, taking the 1967 cartoon (which was more of a musical) and giving it a live-action upgrade, complete with plenty of digital effects to help create the jungle landscape and wild animals that populate the story. Actually, that sentence makes the movie sound awful. Obviously, we don’t yet know how this remake will turn out, but the footage in the first full trailer released on Tuesday looks extremely promising. Take a look.
Honestly, it’s difficult to imagine the first footage made available looking much better than this. Can you tell what’s real and what’s CGI from that trailer? Chances are most, if not all, of those animals are digital creations, lest filmmakers put a child in danger. But those beasts look pretty real. OK, maybe Kaa the snake looks a little bit fake. But we’re probably supposed to forget about that with Scarlett Johansson providing its voice.
Directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) and written by Justin Marks, the voice cast also includes Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Giancarlo Esposito and Christopher Walken. And that’s 10-year-old Neel Sethi playing Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves who finds he’s no longer welcome in the jungle.
The Jungle Book opens in theaters April 15, 2016.
