Warner Bros. has plans to bring back to the screen the tale of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Variety reports that Steve Kloves is in talks to write and direct a live-action adaptation.
First collected in 1894, the short story anthology — though entirely fictional — was inspired by Kipling’s own time spent living in India. Although the first book (a sequel, The Second Jungle Book followed shortly) contains several other tales, the best known today are those featuring Mowgli, a human child raised by the animals of the jungle.
Mowgli’s story is famously featured in an animated The Jungle Book feature, released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1967. It was later adapted into a live-action version in 1998 and also spun off into the bizarre animated series “Talespin,” which placed the animal characters from the film in an Only Angels Have Wings-inspired world of airplane couriers.
Several of the non-Mowgli stories have also been adapted for the screen with the animated The White Seal in 1974 and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in 1975, both directed by Chuck Jones. It remains to be seen if any of these stories will find their way into the Warner Bros. version.
Kloves, who is best known for writing seven of the Harry Potter films, last directed Flesh and Bone in 1993.
