Don't get confused. Yes there are two adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book on the way. Disney and Jon Favreau are developing their version opening next year, while Warner Bros. has Andy Serkis directing The Jungle Book: Origins. With the film set for 2016, Serkis has turned to his The Hobbit co-star Benedict Cumberbatch to voice man-eating tiger, Shere Khan, lifelong enemy of the orphaned Mowgli. Cumberbatch will be seen later this year as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, and will voice the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. [THR]
Juan Antonio Bayona (The Impossible) has added Sigourney Weaver and Toby Kebbell to the cast of A Monster Calls, his adaptation of Patrick Ness' dark fairy tale. Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones star in the film about a boy who tries to cope with being bullied and his mother's terminal illness by escaping to a fantasy world where a monster tells stories of courage, loss, and faith. Kebbell, who was last seen causing trouble in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and will do the same as Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four, will play the boy's father with Weaver as his grandmother. [THR]
