‘The Jungle Book 2’ is already in development at Disney

Jungle Book 2: As the first film gets set to arrive in cinemas, Disney plan a follow-up.

The first film doesn’t officially hit cinemas until this Friday, but a ‘Jungle Book 2’ is already in development over at Disney with Jon Favreau once again at the helm.

The news comes via The Hollywood Reporter who also report that Justin Marks is also in negotiations to return to pen the screenplay. Favreau will also produce the film along with Brigham Taylor.

The first film, based on the books of Rudyard Kipling and on the 1967 animated version from Disney, is getting wide-spread positive reviews, including one here on THN. Here’s a snippet of what we thought of it.

The vocal performances are excellent,  stand-outs being Bill Murray’s lovable Baloo, the fierce tones of Idris Elba (in his second of three Disney movies this year – following Zootropolis and ahead of Finding Dory) are spot-on and thoroughly nail-biting, and Walken’s King Louie so eccentrically wonderful.

Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book is a magnificent adventure that is wonderfully told. A visual marvel throughout, the film captures the magic of Disney’s original movie and through the wonders of modern technology, propels the viewer into a photo-realistic world full of talking animals, scary tigers and yes, singing bears all over again. A wild, roaring, visual wonder that is truly memorable. Go and see it at your earliest opportunity.

No news on when The Jungle Book 2 will actually start production, but we’re guessing that, like the first film, it will be entirely shot on sound-stages in Los Angeles, and feature a largely CGI-cast.

The Jungle Book features the vocal talents of Bill Murray as Baloo the bear, Sir Ben Kingsley as Begheera the panther, Scarlet Johansson as Kaa the serpent and Lupita Nyong’o as Raksha. Need Sethi plays the only live action character in the movie, Mowgli. Another version of the origins of The Jungle Book story is also in the works over at Warner Brothers, and will be directed by Andy Serkis. News reached us last week that the film had been pushed back to 2018.

More on The Jungle Book 2 as we get it.