Reboot in the works over at the Mouse House.
Multiple outlets are reporting that Walt Disney Pictures has begun development on a new live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book,’ hiring screenwriter Justin Marks (‘Hack/Slash,’ ‘Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li’) to provide the script.
Published in 1894, the majority of Kipling’s India-based fables follow the adventures of Mowgli, a young boy abandoned and brought up by wolves, educated in the ways and secrets of the jungle by Kaa the python, Baloo the bear, and a black panther named Bagheera.
‘The Jungle Book’ has been adapted many times before with Disney’s 1967 animation the best known iteration. The Mouse House also released a live-action adaptation in 1994 with Stephen Sommers directing Jason Scott Lee in the role of Mowgli.
Disney is not alone in revisiting Kipling’s fables, as the suits over at Warner Bros. are working with writer/director Steve Kloves on a competing live-action project, while the India-based animation house DQ Entertainment Ireland Limited is busy working away on a 3D animated version.