Trailer
Plot summary
In the jungles of 1890s India, Mowgli is an orphaned boy raised by the Seeonee wolf pack led by Akela, with Raksha as his adoptive mother. Bagheera, the black panther who found him as a baby, serves as his protector. When the dry season brings the jungle animals to the last pools of water under an ancient truce, Shere Khan, a scarred Bengal tiger, arrives and warns that he will kill the boy once the drought is over. The wolves debate whether Mowgli can remain with them, though he wants to stay. To keep the pack safe, he chooses to leave for the man-village nearby, and Bagheera volunteers to guide him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Jungle Book (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Casting Mowgli took thousands of auditions from children in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada before newcomer Neel Sethi won the part. Casting director Rebecca Williams said he embodied the character's "heart, humor, and daring" and had an intelligence beyond his years.
- Visual effects supervisor Keith Miller said Weta Digital took Christopher Walken's "iconic lines, wrinkles and folds" and worked them into the animated King Louie so that director Jon Favreau could see the actor in the creature.
- Jim Henson's Creature Shop was brought in to build animal puppets for Neel Sethi to act against, performed by Artie Esposito, Sean Johnson, Allan Trautman and April Warren, none of which appear in the finished film.
- Scarlett Johansson was cast as the python Kaa, a character who was male in Disney's 1967 film, because director Jon Favreau felt the original was "a little too male-oriented".
- The Jungle Book was the first film ever released in Dolby Vision 3D, showing in a few select theaters in New York City and Chicago.
- King Louie was changed from an orangutan to an Indian Gigantopithecus, later reclassified as an Indopithecus, because orangutans are not native to India, where the story takes place.
- For the Indian campaign, Disney India commissioned a new recording of "Jungle Jungle Baat Chali Hai", the song from the popular 1990s Indian version of the anime series Jungle Book Shōnen Mowgli, overseen by its original composers Vishal Bhardwaj and Gulzar.
