The Jungle Book
The legend comes to life.
The Jungle Book (2016)
Budget
$175 000 000
Revenue
$966 550 600
Director
Scenario
Rudyard Kipling
Author
Composer
Producer
Actors
Neel Sethi
Mowgli
Bill Murray
Baloo (voice)
Ben Kingsley
Bagheera (voice)
Idris Elba
Shere Khan (voice)
Scarlett Johansson
Kaa (voice)
Christopher Walken
King Louie (voice)
Lupita Nyong'o
Raksha (voice)
Giancarlo Esposito
Akela (voice)
Short description
The Jungle Book centers on Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. When the tiger Shere Khan, scarred by humans and determined to remove any human presence from the jungle, threatens the pack, Mowgli must leave the only home he has known. His journey toward the human world is guided by the panther Bagheera and the easygoing bear Baloo, while dangers such as the python Kaa and the tiger himself are never far behind. The story adapts Rudyard Kipling's tales and was directed by Jon Favreau for Walt Disney Pictures, with a screenplay by Justin Marks. It mixes live-action performance with photorealistic computer-generated settings and animals; Neel Sethi plays Mowgli, while Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson and Christopher Walken voice the main animal characters.
The film sits between Favreau's Chef and The Lion King in his directing career and was produced by Favreau and Brigham Taylor on a budget of 175 million dollars. It went on to take close to a billion dollars worldwide, far exceeding its cost. On IMDb it holds a 7.3 rating from roughly 305,000 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.9 from about 8,600 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from 327 reviews places professional assessments somewhat above those audience scores. The large vote counts on IMDb point to a wide international viewership rather than a niche following.
What's left behind the scenes
- When creating the images of talking animals, the habits of real animals were used, which the actors had to copy using so-called motion capture technology.
- This is the fourth joint project between director Jon Favreau and composer John Debney. They previously worked together on the films "Elf" (2003), "Zathura: A Space Adventure" (2005), and "Iron Man 2" (2010).
- Giancarlo Esposito, who voices Akela, starred in an advertisement for the computer game *Destiny* (2014), where he read an excerpt from the poem *The Law of the Jungle* from Rudyard Kipling's *The Second Jungle Book*.
- Baloo whistles the song "The Bare Necessities" from the 1967 Disney cartoon.
- In the cartoon "The Jungle Book" (1967), King Louie is depicted as an orangutan. In the film, he will be a gigantopithecus. It is believed that these ancestors of orangutans inhabited some parts of India. The filmmakers preferred the gigantopithecus to make the film more fantastic and because orangutans do not live in India.
- This is the thirteenth film from *Walt Disney Pictures* for which John Debney composed the music.
- This is the first joint work of Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray since the film *Lost in Translation* (2003).
- Baloo is voiced by Bill Murray. In "The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story" (1998), the same character was voiced by his older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray.
- The volume shown against the end credits is the same one featured at the beginning of the 1967 animated film of the same name. According to director Jon Favreau, this completes the on-screen story of Mowgli, which began in 1967.
- For the first time in history, Kaa is portrayed as a female character.
- A remake of the 1967 cartoon as a live-action film with elements of computer animation. The authors have made some changes to it, including episodes from Rudyard Kipling's book in the plot to make the narrative more engaging.
- Approximately 1,000 locations in the jungles of India were photographed during pre-production and then used as references during post-production.
- Neil Sethi, who played Mowgli, admitted that he had never filmed with real animals before, and director Jon Favreau sometimes stood in for him – in scenes with animals, and especially with Shere Khan.
- All locations used in the film were created using computer graphics.
- This was Bill Murray's first film for Walt Disney Pictures. Previously, he had only appeared in films released under the Touchstone Pictures label (a film division of Disney): 'What About Bob?' (1991), 'Ed Wood' (1994), 'Rushmore' (1998), 'Cradle Will Rock' (1999), 'The Royal Tenenbaums' (2001), and 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' (2004). Additionally, Murray became the second actor from 'Ghostbusters' (1984) to play a bear. Dan Aykroyd did so before him in 2010, starring in 'Yogi Bear'.
- In Disney's 1967 *The Jungle Book*, King Louie was an orangutan (incidentally, this character was not created by the author of the original Mowgli story, English traveler and writer Rudyard Kipling, but by Disney employees). In this film, Louie is a gigantopithecus, an extinct genus of hominids that inhabited the territories of modern-day India, China, Thailand, and Vietnam. The orangutan was changed to a gigantopithecus to make the whole story even more fantastic, and to show that orangutans are not native to India.
- This is Christopher Walken's first participation in projects from *Walt Disney Pictures* since the film *The Wild Thornberrys Movie* (2002).
- The basis for depicting the animals in the film was largely real wild animals found in India. However, the filmmakers increased the animals' size by approximately 30% (to emphasize Mowgli's weakness and, in general, humanity's unsuitability for life in the jungle). Of course, this only heightened the sense of threat posed by Shere Khan and Kaa. On the other hand, it had exactly the same effect on viewers in terms of the feeling of friendliness associated with the wolf pack or Bagheera. In reality, wolves and leopards that inhabit India are relatively small (an individual is smaller than the average person). Even King Louie appears significantly larger than a real gigantopithecus (these extinct hominids were up to 3 meters tall, while Louie reaches about 4.5 meters).
- Motion capture technology was used to create the animal characters, and puppeteers from The Jim Henson Company portrayed them. In addition, it was specialists from The Jim Henson Company who created full-size animal replicas that played in scenes with Mowgli.
- Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, and Idris Elba have starred in films based on *Marvel* comics; Christopher Walken played in *Batman Returns* (1992) based on *DC* comics; Bill Murray participated in the filming of *Garfield* (2004) based on the newspaper comic strip.
- Over 2,000 children from around the world auditioned for the role of Mowgli. For Neel Sethi, these were his first film auditions ever. He was one of the last candidates John Favreau reviewed. Two weeks later, Sethi had already begun filming.
- The wolf cubs in the film are named after the actors and other members of the film crew.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
