Right now, Jon Favreau is currently shooting “Chef,” a star-studded—it features Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale and Dustin Hoffman—return to the sort of smaller, character movies he made at the beginning of his career. But the filmmaker still likes to play in the big sandbox of VFX and franchises, and he’ll be doing just that soon enough.
Favreau has signed on direct Disney‘s brewing reboot of “The Jungle Book.” First announced this past summer, it will be a live action take on the beloved story and it already has a script from Justin Marks, one of the pens who’ve tried to crack the studio’s “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea,” once mooted for David Fincher. So what makes this version of the story about Mowgli and his animal pals different from the 1967 classic animated movie, and the small handful of redos since? Franchising and spectacle, of course.
“I can’t say that much, but there is an interesting take that could be very cool, and the hope is to relaunch a family brand with certain mythic elements,” Favreau told Deadline. “It is my first real family film since ‘Elf,’ and there are action elements and visual effects that I feel like my experience on the ‘Iron Man’ films are going to be useful.”
Production on the movie is aiming to start next year, which is probably a bummer to Warner Bros. who have their own competing project in the works.
