Franchise Necessities: Live Action ‘The Jungle Book’

Franchise Necessities: Live Action ‘The Jungle Book’
Kevin Jagernauth - The Playlist

So here we go with “The Jungle Book,” as THR reports Disney has hired Justin Marks, who penned an early draft of the studio’s “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” reboot, to write the script. Hooray! Listen, it’s just the bare, franchise necessities which is why this is happening, though since Rudyard Kipling‘s stories are in the public domain it means they have competition from Warner Bros. who have their own Mowgli feature brewing, penned by “Harry Potter” dude Steve Kloves.

Hmm. I’m not sure how much I care about this. Of course the headline caught my eye because I’ve only watched the disney animated The Jungle Book (1967) 50 bazillion times while growing up (and could probably repeat every line of dialog to you and sing every song for you even now).

I also watched a live action film from 1942 in my younger years, but not too many times, and I don’t have great memories of that. Disney also apparently already put out a live action The Jungle Book in 1994 of which I was not aware starring Jason Scott Lee, Cary Elwes (who’s apparently not mostly dead here), Same Neill, and John Cleese among others. Given those names, I think this film just made it onto my watch list.

In any event, I’m not sure that a reboot of a live action film is entirely needed or warranted, but whatever. We’ll see what comes of it.