Moviefone Editorial

Tag: @movieid:20056913

Best of 2016: Biggest Movies at the Box Office

Captain America: Civil War, The Jungle Book, Finding Dory

Biggest Movies at Box Office – From Deadpool to Finding Dory

Animals and action. That’s the formula for box office success from 2016 with the top movies featuring critters who swim, crawl and slither and comic book characters who can’t stop fighting. Here are the top films from 2016 at the domestic box office, along with behind-the-screen interviews and special features from Made in Hollywood.

5. Deadpool – $363 million

Could an R-rated comic book movie succeed? “Deadpool” proved it could and a whole lot more, taking the traditional elements from the Marvel cinematic universe — heroes, villains, superpowers, special effects set pieces — and adding racy language, steamy sex, astute satire, sharp-edged irony, nifty acting by Ryan Reynolds, and laugh-out-loud comedy to create a unique blockbuster.

4. The Jungle Book – $364 million

Shot in a blue-screen studio in downtown LA, this CGI extravaganza brings the animated class to life, the tale of the boy raised in the jungle infused with lush landscapes and creatures so authentic — and sometimes so scary — you can practically feel their fur. Big names like Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray and Lupita Nyong’o provide the voices, but the star of “The Jungle Book” is really director Jon Favrea who pulled off this amazing blend of art and science.

3. The Secret Life of Pets – $368 million

So that’s what they do all day when we’re not around. This animated romp stars a spoiled terrier voiced by Louis C.K. and a bad-attitude bunny named Snowball (Kevin Hart) on a mission against the humans who’ve done them wrong. After watching “The Secret Life of Pets” you’ll never forget to refill that food bowl again.

2. Captain America: Civil War – $408 million

It had to happen sooner or later. The Avengers break down into warring factions pitting Chris Evans’ Captain America against Robert Downey Jr.‘s Iron Man — with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson” and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) caught in the middle. If you didn’t see the Big Fight to the Finish coming in this second Marvel movie in the Top 5, well, you must be losing your own super powers.

1. Finding Dory – $486 million

They say sequels are never as good as the original. Well, they haven’t seen “Finding Dory.” The long-awaited followup to the 2003 smash “Finding Nemo” has the world’s favorite forgetful blue tang fish Dory (voiced again by Ellen DeGeneres) embarking on a journey with her friends Nemo and Marlin to find her parents.

20058395 20056913 20069630 65108 58769

December 29, 2016
Pull Up Your Red Diaper for ‘The Jungle Book’ Honest Trailer

Disney’s “The Jungle Book” is now available on Digital HD, so in its honor, Screen Junkies gave the movie its own Honest Trailer … that takes its harshest shots at the Andy Serkis “Jungle Book” coming in 2018.

The Honest Trailers series is usually pretty brutal, but they clearly loved director Jon Favreau’s “The Jungle Book,” calling it “the year’s best film about talking animals, which is really saying something, ’cause there’s been like 10 of them already and the year’s not even done yet.” They also call it groundbreaking, well-written, visually stunning, and action-packed, accepting that it’s just way better than it should be.

“Follow along on a young man’s search for acceptance in this winning combination of ‘The Lion King,’ a Ben Kingsley nature documentary, and a kid-friendly version of ‘The Revenant.’ Jeez I hope there’s no deleted scene where he sleeps inside of a rhino… Journey deep inside a downtown Los Angeles blue screen studio, where a grown man spent months playing with a little boy in his underwear, that they turned into this? Holy crap.”

Pretty amazing. Watch the Honest Trailer trailer:It’s true. Scarlett Johansson’s voice is a turn-on in just about any context.

Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook.

August 24, 2016
5 Reasons Why Nothing Can Stop ‘Jungle Book’ at the Box Office

Many box office analysts predicted that “The Jungle Book” would not only three-peat atop the box office this weekend, but that it would earn more than three new wide releases combined.

In fact, it earned nearly twice the combined total of those new releases. In its third weekend, the Disney talking-animal tale earned an estimated $42.4 million in North America, while newcomers “Keanu” (at an estimated $9.4 million), “Mother’s Day” ($8.3 million), and “Ratchet and Clank” ($4.8 million) combined for about $22.5 million.

So far, “Jungle Book” has been blessed, not only by its own strong reviews and word-of-mouth, but by weak competition. Still, good fortune and good timing aren’t enough to explain why the Rudyard Kipling adaptation has held up so well or why none of its rivals can muster up much interest on their own. Here are five reasons why “Jungle Book” bested all comers this weekend.

1. It’s the Event Movie of April
This column has already noted the strengths of “The Jungle Book,” including its calculated appeal to all demographics, Disney’s skillful marketing, and the movie’s visual spectacle that demands to be seen in 3D or large-format screenings. But the movie has also become the event movie of choice for the past month, helping cement April as the new start of the summer blockbuster season.

Having earned a very strong A grade at CinemaScore, “Jungle Book” has generated more enthusiastic word-of-mouth than any other April movie. As a result, the movie has boasted unusually strong legs, declining just 40 percent its second weekend and just 31 percent this weekend. On its 4,041 screens, it’s still averaging $10,502 per theater, far above any other movie currently in wide release.

2. Weak and Poorly-Executed Competition
That’s what’s plagued many of “Jungle Book’s” competitors over the past three weeks, at least according to critics.

This weekend, “Mother’s Day” and “Ratchet and Clank” earned particularly harsh reviews, managing only an 8 percent and a 19 percent fresh rating, respectively, at Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences liked them a little better (they graded the movies B+ and B, respectively, at CinemaScore), but that still indicates less than avid word-of-mouth.

3. Market Saturation
“Keanu,” the R-rated comedy from sketch duo Key and Peele, did get positive-ish reviews (75 percent at Rotten Tomatoes) and just-okay word-of-mouth (a B CinemaScore), but it had to compete against the still-strong “Barbershop: The Next Cut,” another well-reviewed, adult-oriented comedy with greater star power and a less restrictive PG-13 rating. (In its third weekend, “Barbershop” earned another estimated $6.1 million, good for fifth place.)

In fact, the adult audience had more than enough to choose from this weekend, from last week’s newcomer flop “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” to “Mother’s Day.” “Ratchet and Clank,” a cartoon based on a videogame, did have kid appeal, but not more than “Jungle Book” or even nine-week-old “Zootopia.” It finished below both those Disney movies, in seventh place.

4. Dim Star Power
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele may have a big cult following from “Key & Peele,” but it didn’t translate into box office drawing power. “Ratchet” has some big names, including kid star Bella Thorne and John Goodman (whose voice kids might recognize from Pixar’s “Monsters, Inc.“) but no one who’s guaranteed to sell tickets, not even Sylvester Stallone.

And speaking of people who used to be box office draws, “Mother’s Day” features Julia Roberts and Kate Hudson, neither of whom has set the box office on fire in recent years. It also features Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis, who’ve done well in recent years; they even had a smash together in “We’re the Millers.” But there’s no reason fans of that raunchy, R-rated comedy would be interested in the mild, PG-13, family-themed “Mother’s Day.” Like director Garry Marshall’s other recent holiday-timed movies, this is an ensemble comedy of interlocking stories with a common setting and theme, so its selling point is its premise more than its cast.

5. Captain America
In many ways, the box office is in a holding pattern until Disney and Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” kicks off summer on May 6 — just like they did last summer when “Avengers: Age of Ultron” opened during the first weekend of May.

Already, the superhero showdown has opened overseas, where it did a jaw-dropping $200.2 million in estimated sales in 37 countries. No doubt it’ll be similarly huge when it drops in the U.S. It’s no surprise that the studios have been saving their big guns for the summer. If they’d waited another week to issue any of this weekend’s new wide releases, even putting “Mother’s Day” out on the actual Mother’s Day weekend, those films would have been clobbered for certain.

Better to take your chances against the three-week-old predators of “The Jungle Book.”

%Slideshow-378100%

May 2, 2016
5 Reasons Why ‘Jungle Book’ Roared to the Top of the Box Office

It wasn’t a big surprise that Disney’s new live-action “The Jungle Book” opened at No. 1 this weekend. What was a shocker, however, was just how big the latest version of Rudyard Kipling’s tale turned out to be.

Going into the weekend, positive buzz for the film led to predictions that it would open to at least $70 million, $85 million on the high-end of expectations. On Sunday, however, Disney estimated that the film’s opening weekend had grossed $103.6 million. That makes it the second-biggest April opening ever, beating the $95.0 million earned by “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” two years ago, and second only to last year’s “Furious 7,” at $147.2 million. It’s also the biggest April opening ever for a PG-rated movie.

How did “Jungle Book” over-perform so much this weekend? Here are five ways.

1. Marketing
By now, Disney has mastered the art of turning its beloved animated classics into live-action reboots. But there’s more than brand recognition at work here. Disney’s marketers — and director Jon Favreau — made a point of playing up the state-of-the-art CG that allowed the filmmakers to simulate a jungle in a Los Angeles warehouse and populate it with photorealistic animals. The trailers audiences saw, and the advance stories they read, promised not just a kiddie adventure with talking animals, but also an immersive experience in a lush, exotic world on the level of “Avatar.”

2. 3D and IMAX
As a result, this marked the rare film that viewers felt merited the surcharges they’d have to pay to see it in an enhanced format. It helped that 75 percent of North American theaters showing “Jungle Book” screened it in 3D. A healthy 43 percent of the movie’s opening-weekend sales came from 3D tickets. It was also playing on 376 IMAX screens, good for $10.4 million, amounting to 10 percent of the total gross, and scoring another April record for a Disney feature.

And there were 463 Premium Large Format screens, for those willing to pay extra to see “Jungle Book” on a giant screen that’s not quite as eye-filling as IMAX. You could also see the film in D-Box, where your theater seat lurches in response to the on-screen action. Surcharges for those tickets can be as much as $8, meaning Disney was ensured to mint money on this film wherever people saw it.

3. Timing
Remember when the summer movie season began on Memorial Day? No? Remember when it began on May 1? Well, now, thanks to hits like “Winter Soldier,” “Furious 7,” and now, “Jungle Book,” summer seemingly begins just after spring break. Or it will within a couple of years. For now, however, April is still clear enough of blockbusters that a movie like “Jungle Book” can pretty much have the month to itself.

4. Weak Competition
This weekend’s crop of new releases posed no real threat to “Jungle Book’s” box office reign. Neither of this weekend’s other two new wide releases opened on more than 2,700 screens, compared to 4,028 for “Jungle Book.” “Barbershop: The Next Cut,” a sequel in a comedy franchise whose last installment came out 12 years ago, debuted in second place with an estimated $20.2 million. That’s below expectations and also shy of the $24.2 million opening weekend for 2004’s “Barbershop 2: Back in Business.” (“Cut” came in with less than the opening weekend of the original film.)

As for Kevin Costner‘s new thriller, “Criminal,” no one expected it to do more than about $8 million, but it fell short with $5.9 million. It didn’t even make the top five. Opening in sixth place, it is Costner’s lowest premiere weekend since since 2005’s “Rumor Has It.”

5. Four-quadrant Audience Appeal
One potential weakness in “Jungle Book” — had Disney stayed close to the 1967 cartoon — is that it’s an awfully male-oriented story, with no female characters of any significance, or even speaking parts. Favreau and his team changed that by making one male character (the python Kaa) female and boosting the role of another (Mowgli’s wolf mother, Raksha.) Scarlett Johansson voices Kaa (above), and Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o voices Raksha. Making the movie more inclusive seems to have paid off at the box office, since Disney exit polling showed that 51 percent of the viewers were female.

Favreau and his team also made sure the movie appealed to more than just kids. Celebrity voices (including Bill Murray and Chistopher Walken), an air of real danger in Mowgli’s confrontations with predators, and nostalgic shout-outs to the original cartoon (including such songs as “Bare Necessities” and “I Wan’na Be Like You”) all helped to draw grown-up viewers. According to Disney, some 43 percent of ticketbuyers were adults seeing the movie on their own.

Of course, what ultimately sold the movie was its execution. Critics raved, giving “Jungle Book” a 95 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences loved it just as much, judging by the A CinemaScore, indicating very positive word-of-mouth. So: a good movie will draw audiences of all ages and both sexes off their couches and into the theaters — and even inspire them to pay extra for an enhanced viewing experience. Who knew?

%Slideshow-375105%

April 17, 2016
Why Disney’s Live-Action ‘Jungle Book’ Has Deep Roots in ‘Bambi,’ ‘Lion King’

In anticipation of Disney‘s live-action adaptation of “The Jungle Book,” Moviefone had the opportunity to chat with director Jon Favreau about what inspired him to re-imagine the beloved animated classic.

Opening this Friday, Favreau’s movie takes us back into the jungle with Mowgli and friends using cutting-edge technology that renders an incredible, photo-realistic world in 3D. When you see it, you’ll be shocked by the knowledge that “The Jungle Book” was shot entirely in Downtown Los Angeles using practical sets and Dolby vision laser projection. In other words, if you thought movies like “Avatar” and “Life of Pi” looked amazing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

We also get some of what we love from the original musical Walt Disney production but fit to reflect the time and outfitted with a stellar voice cast. Newcomer Neel Sethi plays Mowgli and is joined by Sir Ben Kingsley (Bagheera), Lupita Nyong’o (Raksha), Bill Murray (Baloo), Scarlett Johansson (Kaa), Idris Elba (Shere Khan), Giancarlo Esposito (Akilah) and Christopher Walken (King Louie).

With all of this in mind, we couldn’t wait to talk to Favreau about raising the bar on visual storytelling using a tried and proven method: the Walt Disney way.

Moviefone: What I took away the most from your take on “The Jungle Book” was just how steeped in Walt Disney’s philosophy for storytelling it was. You did what he did with fairy tales and the classic Kipling story to create a new take on a beloved movie. How did you go about mining the core of the original film’s narrative to build your own vision?

Jon Favreau: You just can’t make the movie exactly like the old one. It wouldn’t work live-action, so we had to make some changes to it. Hopefully, we honored the legacy of the original one enough that you feel satisfied if you’re expecting that, but yet you’re seeing something that goes further in some ways.

Enough people who love Disney have seen it that I feel comfortable that we didn’t at least put them off — that we didn’t do our homework and embrace the original. That was an important film for me.When tackling this project, what helped you focus on the story you wanted to tell as you researched the original?

It’s interesting because it’s not like going back to the original movie unlocked all those puzzles. The trick that I had done on “Iron Man” that had worked pretty well was: the first thing I do is try to remember and brainstorm for the images and the things I remember most clearly because if it sits clearly in your memory it’s probably been prioritized and is most important. And so “Bare Necessities” was a big one, and “I Wanna Be Like You,” King Louie and the crumbling temple, and Kaa with his hypnotic eyes, and the boy being woozy, and me being scared. And then floating down the river and singing, and Shere Khan and the torch, and the elephants and the baby elephant.

I make a big list of all that stuff, and then I look at the materials because, when you watch it fresh, you’ll connect with different things. I wanted to make sure to include all those images that I had connected to. And then I actually took a lot of cues from the way the plot unfolds the story because that was actually well done. Walt’s a great story man, and that was very different from the book. We looked at the books, too, to get inspiration. Certain things the books were better at. I like the treatment of the elephants in the books. I like the treatment of Ikki, the porcupine, I liked Raksha, the mother. So I kinda pick and choose between the two. I think me being such a fan of the material and connecting with it gave me confidence that my instincts were going to be the instincts of others like me.

With that wealth of information, how did you tread through it and not let it overwhelm your vision for “The Jungle Book”?

They say a book is like designing a boat, and a screenplay is like designing an airplane. It has to lift. Once you hit the end of that runway, the thing has to take off. And if it doesn’t fly under its own engineering, it falls apart. So there are certain rules you have to stick by. You have to keep the pace at a certain rhythm, you have to have the right mixture of emotion and tone, and once you lock into that you could get clues from other movies. Honestly, as much as we looked at “Jungle Book,” we looked at “Bambi,” we looked at “Pinocchio,” we looked at “The Lion King.” For the PG version, we made, there were more clues in those films than there were in “The Jungle Book” for how to present it, because we always found ourselves tonally: a little too young, a little too humorous. So whenever we brought in a musical element or a humorous element from the original, we found ourselves really having to be careful that we didn’t trip up the whole film.On a recent trip to the old Ink and Paint building over at Walt Disney Studios, I saw a multi-plane shadowbox for the opening scene of “Bambi,” which I immediately thought of during the opening of your film in its composition.

We looked at that shot. We looked at the opening of “Bambi” because back, when he was doing Bambi, Walt was still flushed with success and revenue from “Snow White,” which was a huge hit and, unfortunately, over Walt’s career, they were operating to diminishing returns from that point on. But Walt was so passionate that he would convince Roy, his brother, to give him the resources and the people that he needed. “Bambi” was really the one where he wanted to raise the bar like they were able to do in “Snow White” and that was his labor of love for many, many years.

I don’t know if he was ever fully satisfied with the version that came out judging from the notes that I had read, because the studio was coming into a lot of other challenges. I think the war was coming on or the strike. I think it was the strike for that film, and there was definitely a version of the film he was going for and what was nice is that he got stenographers keeping notes of all their story sessions. On the Blu-ray of “Bambi,” you hear them talking about how they were gonna make the animals look photo-real, and the tone of the performance vs. how cartooney they were in “Snow White,” how realistic they were presenting them, and the way there were gonna show the photo-real backgrounds, and how they would stylize things. And the way they would treat the hunter, and the way they would treat the weather. Hearing it in his read-back transcript, it was almost like having him available to us. And he really was wrestling with a lot of things people wrestle with today. Certainly, we did.

So we drew inspiration looking at the shots. The beauty of the shots in “Bambi” were unsurpassed by the time we got to the ’67 “Jungle Book” film. Although character animation was still hitting a high watermark because you had the Nine Old Men around. I think most if not all of them were still around for the animated emotional moments. You didn’t have the same lushness of the multi-plane, nearly the amount of artists designing a project like this. And, although it was a big success for them financially, it wasn’t embraced in the same way the films like “Snow White” were in its day. So I think by trying to channel the entire Disney legacy and then also “The Lion King,” which came afterwards (that was affected very much by “The Jungle Book” if you hear the animators of that one speak). I think that one was essential in having fun musical moments but also having scary moments, where characters are in serious danger.

And taking cues from Walt there makes so much sense, it immerses you in Mowgli’s world, with its practical and CGI surroundings.

He used to do that with his “Alice” and old “Laugh-O-Gram” stuff by having a live-action girl in an illustrated world. It was something he was first drawn to. So yeah, we really tried to honor the legacy but tried to do something new and exciting that just stands on its own two feet.

We’ve got to talk casting; this is an incredible ensemble. What inspired you to approach the talent attached to the film?

That’s a big part of my job. You know Walt Disney in “The Jungle Book” was the only time he did celebrity casting because those people were famous back then before the film, so I think it gave me permission to go after higher people like Christopher Walken or Idris Elba.

Loved the cowbell reference by the way. So meta!Did you catch it? I’m so glad it’s in there. That was an on-set discovery. That was a prop in the background that I pulled and I said, “Oh my god, this is what Mowgli has to use. I knew he had to touch something that would get the attention of King Louie and I saw the cowbell off to the side and I pulled that in and swapped it out for the prop that we had designed for it.

Awesome. Sorry, back to casting…

With Christopher Walken and Bill Murray, I let them really be themselves and be recognizable through the characters. I think that was part of what made the original special as well.

Disney’s “The Jungle Book” opens Friday, April 15th.

April 12, 2016
5 Things You Need to Know Before Seeing Disney’s ‘The Jungle Book’

Disney’s latest live-action update of one of its classic animated features is “The Jungle Book.” But don’t expect just a shiny CG update of the 1967 cartoon that turned Rudyard Kipling’s fierce beasts into mostly adorable, toy-ready critters. For one thing, if you’ve seen the trailers, you know this new version features some impressive-looking animals, speaking with the voices of some impressive stars. For another thing, its director is Jon Favreau, who helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Iron Man.”

Favreau and Disney clearly wanted to make something more than just a retread of the studio’s 1967 cartoon — or Disney’s 1994 live-action version. Judging by the 100% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, they’ve pulled it off. Here are five things you need to know before entering the “Jungle.”

1. Think ‘Avatar,’ Only Earthbound
The James Cameron epic is a movie Favreau has name-checked often in describing the exotic, immersive, 3D forest world he’s tried to create here. From its setting to its jungle animals, Favreau’s film is almost completely CGI — except, of course, for Neel Sethi, the 12-year-old New York native who plays wild boy Mowgli.

Favreau and his effects team shot the whole film on stages in downtown Los Angeles, digitally added lush vegetation, and populated it with creatures based on the appearances and movements of real animals — but given an artistic flourish by digital animators. Imagine the CGI tiger in “Life of Pi,” except that he’s moving his lips as Idris Elba’s (above) menacing voice emerges from his mouth.

2. This Is No Cartoon
The generally-lighthearted 1967 cartoon wasn’t especially faithful to the source material. Favreau has said his film delves deeper into the Kipling stories, which means the animals are more savage and the danger to Mowgli is greater. Elba’s tiger Shere Khan is reportedly one of the scariest screen villains since — well, Elba’s warlord in “Beasts of No Nation.” No wonder some critics are calling the film a kiddie “Revenant.”

3. It’s Not Just a Guy Thing
Favreau decided that the cartoon, populated almost exclusively by male characters, needed more feminine presences. So Kaa the Python got a sex change; she’s voiced by Scarlett Johansson (pictured). Interestingly, in “Jungle Book: Origins,” Andy Serkis‘ upcoming 2017 take on the same public-domain Kipling stories, which will also mix live-action actors and motion-capture animals, Kaa will be female as well, voiced by Cate Blanchett.

Favreau also beefed up the role of Raksha, the wolf mother who adopts Mowgli. She doesn’t even speak in the cartoon, but here, she’s voiced by no less a luminary than Lupita Nyong’o.

4. The Animals Are Zoologically Correct
Well, except for the whole talking thing. But at least Baloo (Bill Murray) is now more obviously a sloth bear, a mammal native to India, than the generic bear of the cartoon. Alas, there are no orangutans in India, so King Louie (Christopher Walken) is now a Gigantopithecus (pictured), an orangutan-like ape that is now extinct but which did once live in India.

5. Don’t Worry, Your Favorite Songs Are Still Here
Darker tone aside, Favreau made sure to keep some of the cartoon’s comic-relief moments, as is apparent by the casting of Murray and Walken. (The late Garry Shandling is here, too, as a nervous porcupine.)

Baloo does get to sing “Bare Necessities” and Louie still sings “I Wan’na Be Like You.” Richard M. Sherman, who wrote that song’s lyrics 50 years ago, has updated the words for the new film. And Kaa still delivers the hypnotic “Trust in Me” — though, instead of Sterling Holloway’s Winnie-the-Pooh bluster, the snake now purrs the words in Johansson’s seductive, unsettling rasp.

“Jungle Book” hits theaters Friday.

%Slideshow-375105%

April 12, 2016
Disney Is Already Working on ‘Jungle Book 2’: Report

Disney is riding high on its upcoming live-action take on “The Jungle Book,” so much so that it’s reportedly already working on a sequel to the flick.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Mouse House has tapped director Jon Favreau and writer Justin Marks to once again assume those roles on the follow-up, which will reportedly be based on other Mowgli-centric stories by author Rudyard Kipling, who penned the original “Jungle Book” tales in the late 1800s. “Disney plans to dig deep into the source material,” per THR.

While this isn’t exactly a new concept — a film getting a sequel order before it hits domestic theaters — it’s good news for the studio, which bet big on its latest trend of live-action remakes of its original animated films, including recent hits like “Cinderella” and “Alice in Wonderland.” “The Jungle Book” — inspired by Disney’s 1967 version of Kipling’s book — is already doing solid business overseas, where it’s opened to the tune of $31.7 million in several international markets (including $8.4 million in India, good for second place on the country’s all-time list of western movie openings).

It’s unclear if any or all of the starry “Jungle Book” voice cast (which includes Bill Murray, Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, and Ben Kingsley) will return for the follow-up, but expect newcomer Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli, to be front and center.

[via: The Hollywood Reporter]

%Slideshow-360726%

April 11, 2016
Mowgli Meets Kaa in Haunting Sneak Peek of Disney’s ‘The Jungle Book’

Disney and director Jon Favreau are almost ready for you to see their live-action adaptation of “The Jungle Book.” The film, out April 15, follows Mowgli (newcomer Neel Sethi), a “man-cub” who was raised by wolves. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o plays Raksha, the mother wolf, and she’s featured at the start of this exclusive sneak peek of the movie.

“This is a grand re-imaging of the classic tale,” Nyong’o says, “and I’m excited for you to see the epic adventure on the big screen in a brand new way.”

The clip itself is haunting, and almost scary, featuring young Mowgli alone in the jungle — until he is joined by the mysterious python Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), whose alluring voice hypnotizes him. “I know what you are,” Kaa says. “I know where you came from. Would you like to see?” He says yes, and the clip gives us — and Mowgli — a brief history of his life, showing how his father was killed by Shere Khan (voice of Idris Elba), with the young child himself rescued by the panther Bagheera (voice of Ben Kingsley).

The rest of the sneak peek flashes through scenes from the movie, which also features the voices of Bill Murray, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken, Garry Shandling, Sam Raimi, and director Jon Favreau himself.

Lupita Nyong’o suggests seeing the movie in IMAX, but you’ll have your pick of formats when Disney’s “The Jungle Book” is released April 15th.Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook.

%Slideshow-375105%

March 31, 2016
Disney’s Live-Action ‘The Jungle Book’: What You Need to Know

The first in-depth look at Disney‘s “The Jungle Book” was unveiled in Los Angeles last month, at a special presentation hosted by Walt Disney Studios and director Jon Favreau. We were able to exclusively experience the advanced 3D tech the film was being shot with and get a sense of how the adaptation of the beloved Disney classic aims to stand apart from the original.

Held at Hollywood’s El Capitan theater, the event’s emcee was none other than the director himself. Favreau introduced a selection of preview clips and delivered insight into what made now the right time to remake “The Jungle Book.” As it turns out, producer Alan Horn grew up on the Mowgli books by Rudyard Kipling, and Favreau grew up a fan of Walt Disney‘s animated classic. Together, they wanted to collaborate on a project to push technology forward and agreed that “The Jungle Book” had the characters, emotion, and music to make it the best option.

“Alan said, ‘Look at the technology, look at “Life of Pi.” Why not use the technology to make a whole world that transports you? Why be limited by going off and shooting plates?’ Let’s really embrace this technology and see what we could do if we push it to its limit.” – Jon Favreau

Dolby Extended Dynamic Range Laser Projection is the state-of-the-art technology that Disney and Favreau are using to bring “The Jungle Book” to audiences. It boasts photo-real imaging to recreate textures and environmental detail. Favreau’s adaptation seeks to bring a tangible cinematic world as far as our eyes can perceive. In the test footage we got to see, the CG (computer generated) elements, like water, lighting, and even wind, were astounding. It was hard to tell a rendered scene apart from real-life images. The process is advancing with animals as well, as now fur and skin can be recreated with near photo-realistic perfection.

Immersing an audience — and an actor — in a believable CG world has it’s challenges, but Disney uses an effective technique that is part practical and part optical illusion. The way the shots are set up goes something like this: Neel Sethi (Mowgli) performs in an active foreground on a practical set (i.e. real life), then the CG animators work to make the background and animal characters fully realized through the technology, seamlessly blending the real with the imaginary.

“If there was a giant we were standing on the shoulders of it was ‘Avatar.’ The first time I saw ‘Avatar,’ I got it, what this whole big screen 3D format thing was about. I got why I had to go to the movies to see that. I don’t know if anyone’s ever outdone the way the 3D was done there. So we shot native 3D using the PACE system, the system that Jim (Cameron) had been a part of developing and we used simulcap and all this technology that people haven’t really been using.” -Jon Favreau

The sights and sounds of the jungle previewed showed off how far the tech has really come since James Cameron‘s “Avatar.” In a scene in which Shere Khan (Idris Elba) begins to sniff out Mowgli’s presence, Sethi’s presence among the CG characters and environment is hard to discern. The way that Favreau places physical set pieces around the actor creates a sense of real space. Meaning, if he hides behind a rock, the rock is actually there.

“So if the kid’s walking 12 feet in the cut of the movie that we have, we built 12 feet of jungle. Each set was built for a shot. The art department or production designer would wheel in one set. We’d film that and across the street in Downtown LA we’d have the other set being prepped. We’d go back and forth and back and forth. It was a very cool efficient process” – Jon Favreau

In a scene in which Shere Khan chases Mowgli through a ravine, the mud the young actor runs through is real. So the trick to blurring the lines between a real and a CG space is in having the actor be affected by the environment, like the mud caked on his feet as he hops on a CG animal and escapes.The ability to really sell these scenes to an audience is a testament to young Sethi’s acting skills. He completely embodies Mowgli with charisma and real, child-like wonder. There’s a reason he was the kid — out of 2,000 who auditioned — to get the part.

“You need the personality and the humor and the charm and the emotion of the characters. That’s really what ‘Jungle Book’ represents. People don’t think about action, it’s fun to have it but really what you think about is the characters and the relationships. Neel really seems to capture for me what I remember of Mowgli in the film. He wasn’t just a cookie-cutter kid. He had spunk and a little swagger. He’s just a great kid and I loved working with him.” -Jon Favreau

Sethi’s acting further elevates the CG techniques Disney and Favreau are pushing to advance. Keep moving forward is a Disney mantra Favreau lives by, and he believes that, if Walt were alive today, he, too, would be experimenting with new, cutting-edge tech.

“I love film, love what Chris Nolan and ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Hateful Eight’ are doing. I don’t want to see film go away. But, at the same time, I think we have to push technology as far as we can because there are other things that digital art is better for. When it comes to such complicated visual effects and putting all these elements together, I want to continue to see digital continue to grow. I don’t want to see anything eliminated; I want to see everything perfected, including film.” – Jon Favreau

We also got a small glimpse of Bill Murray‘s work as the voice of Baloo, singing his signature tune and nailing the lovable bear’s endearing slyness. As Favreau explained, the key to using music in “The Jungle Book” this time around is to only use it when it makes sense for the movie. Favreau consulted with composer Richard Sherman, but no songs beyond “Bare Necessities” were confirmed to be in the movie.

“You’re trying to honor the memories of the people who grew up with this stuff but you’re also trying to make a movie that will appeal to the full audience. There is music but it’s not a musical.” -Jon Favreau

But how can you not have Christopher Walken, who will be playing King Louie, sing? In the last clip presented, we got our first real look at Mowgli meeting the King of the Monkeys. The reveal of the gentle giant hilariously balances action with comedy. Of course, Walken is a riot.

“Because this character lives in the ruins of man, there was a magical quality to him anyway. Who do you pick to play that character? It has to be Chris Walken.” -Jon Favreau

A fun tidbit Favreau shared is their solution to Louie being an orangutan in the animated film, which is inaccurate since, well, orangutans don’t live in India. This time around, they made Louie a mythical creature believed to have inhabited India; he’s basically a Sasquatch with orangutan-like qualities. Animators took special liberties with Walken’s mo-cap performance to imbue the character with the actor’s expressions. It can be a bit eerie, but it works really well.Near the end of the presentation, Favreau was joined on-stage by visual effects supervisor Rob Legato, who had previously worked on “Avatar.”

“In this particular project, which was really exciting, is that we’re creating a total photo-real world that we could recognize is real. We’ve all seen pictures of animals. We’ve all seen how they move, how they walk and how they talk. The really fun portion of this and why it was great to work with Jon is that we had the same sensibility. To actually create a real movie where the suspension of disbelief is easier to let go of because it looks like it could be conventionally filmed.” – Rob Legato, Visual Effects Supervisor

From what we’ve seen so far, Disney’s “The Jungle Book” is shaping up to be a must-see. Let’s be clear: Walt Disney Studios’ adaptation won’t be a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but uses the animated classic as a foundation, expanding Mowgli’s story through Kipling’s original tales in a stunning new format.

You can see for yourself when Disney’s “The Jungle Book” opens April 15th, 2016.

%Slideshow-345773%

February 22, 2016
‘The Jungle Book’ Was Shot Entirely in the Wilds of … Downtown L.A.

To find those lush, leafy, watery, steamy locations of great beauty and lurking danger for “The Jungle Book,” director Jon Favreau only had to follow the signs.

The Caltrans signs.

The stunning images in the trailer for the live-action/CGI reboot of the Disney animated classic all originated just off the 101 Freeway — and a long way from the wilds of India where the story of young Mowgli is set.

“None are real,” Favreau said in a Twitter chat Tuesday to a commenter impressed by how “pretty authentic” the locations looked. “All are CGI. The whole movie was shot in downtown LA.”

Maybe rename the movie “The Concrete Jungle Book?”

Watch the trailer below:

20056913

September 15, 2015