While it was reported last month that Ron Howard would be taking over from the briefly-attached Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Hollywood Reporter now brings word that Warner Bros. Pictures’ upcoming adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book will be helmed by someone with a lot of movie animal experience. Andy Serkis, best known as the motion capture actor behind Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and the mighty title character in King Kong, is locked to direct. He’s been honing his skills as of late as the second unit director on The Hobbit trilogy.
The original book was published in 1894 and includes, among a number of other animal-themed stories, the classic tales of an Indian boy named Mowgli who is raised by wolves and lives among the other animals in the jungle.
Warner’s version of The Jungle Book will have to compete with another adaptation currently in the works. Jon Favreau is set to helm a Walt Disney Pictures take, planned for release on October 9, 2015.
Serkis can be seen in theaters soon, reprising his role as Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. He’s also attached to direct a motion-capture version of Animal Farm. How The Jungle Book might affect those plans remains to be seen.
