‘The Jungle Book’ Trailer: Jon Favreau Welcomes You to the Jungle

Disney’s trend of adapting its animated classics into live action blockbusters has resulted in movies both good and bad, but The Jungle Book looks like it could be something special. The first trailer for the film has arrived and it rightfully puts the emphasis on the animals. Sure, young Mowgli is doing all of the running and the jumping, but we really care about the wide variety of creatures forcing him to do that running and jumping in the first place.

Directed by Jon Favreau (of Iron Man and Chef fame), The Jungle Book boasts an absurd cast of voices for its animal ensemble. Ben Kingsley is Bagheera the panther. Giancarlo Esposito and Lupita Nyong’o are Akela and Raksha the wolves. Scarlett Johansson is Kaa the snake. Idris Elba is Shere Khan the tiger. Christopher Walken is King Louie, the orangutan. And in a stroke of perfect casting, Bill Murray plays Baloo the bear, who we can hear whistling “The Bare Necessities” in the final moments of the trailer. Of this line-up, only Johansson can be heard in this footage, but if the movie is anything like past versions of this tale, they will be a chatty bunch.

Watching those great voices come out of gorgeously rendered CGI animals is going to be truly weird and maybe amazing. We’ll keep our fingers crossed. Any movie that casts Christopher Walken as a giant ape deserves our attention.

The Jungle Book opens on April 15, 2016.