Enjoying healthy buzz and a raft of positive reviews (not to mention some solid box office openings in select countries), Disney's The Jungle Book is about to enter cinemas here and across the pond. And so confident is the Mouse House in its latest animation-to-live-action re-working that it's setting up deals for director Jon Favreau and writer Justin Marks to return for a sequel.
It's naturally too early for any real word on what the pair might plunder for the follow-up plot, but there is a rich vein of Mowgli stories (the man cub played in Favreau's film by newcomer Neel Sethi) written by Rudyard Kipling, so they'll have plenty of source material to choose from.
The current film, which also features the likes of Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong'o and Bill Murray as the voices of the various animals, blends live-action shots of Sethi with CG backgrounds and digitally created critters. It's certainly got the visual side down, and you can see what we thought of it as a whole here.
The Jungle Book opens on Friday. No date has been set for the sequel, assuming everyone returns – Favreau in particular has several projects in development and may choose to work on one of those before returning to his virtual jungle.