The last time theaters saw an adaptation of The Jungle Book was about a decade ago in the form of Disney’s Jungle Book 2 which failed to strike a chord with movie goers. The animated movie was pretty cheap, so the studio still made a hefty profit from it; however, it was far from a vote of confidence for any future adaptations of the 1894 collection of stories from Rudyard Kipling. Perhaps to get a sense of the desire to see a live-action adaptation, people could go back to the 1994′s Stephen Sommers-directed feature which banked only $44 million at the domestic box office.
Nonetheless, Warner Bros. has had previous success by going back to public domain stories from the century with their Sherlock Holmes series, and they are willing to make the second live-action adaptation under the Jungle Book title. Word hit last week that the studio has enlisted Steve Kloves to write, direct, and produce the movie.
Kloves is considered the mastermind behind the Harry Potter book-to-film screenplays, so this is obviously a pretty big deal. Even though he has not directed a film since the early 90′s, he also wrote the yet to be released features The Amazing Spider-Man and Akira which is giving Warner Bros. all the confidence in the world in giving the him the reigns to what could turn out to be a pretty big movie franchise.
[Deadline]