The Jungle Book recently lost its director, but it’s close to nabbing an Oscar winner in his place: Ron Howard.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Academy Award winning director Ron Howard is in talks to direct the upcoming Warner Bros adaptation of The Jungle Book. If the deal is completed, Howard would also produce the film.
The film previously had Babel helmer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu tabbed as director, but he was forced to leave after scheduling conflicts arose.
Scheduling conflicts are something Warner Bros and Howard are willing to work around, or so it currently appears. Howard himself is quite a busy man; just this Monday he signed on to direct the hot drug smuggling film Mena for Universal.
There is no official timeline for the production of The Jungle Book. Currently, Howard is in post-production on In the Heart of the Sea, an adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s best-selling novel of the same name. In addition to the aforementioned Mena, Howard is also attached to direct Inferno, the next installment of Sony’s Da Vinci Code franchise starring Tom Hanks, which was tentatively scheduled for a 2015 release.
Warner Bros will want Howard to make The Jungle Book as soon as possible. It is one of two live action adaptations of the story from an 1894 Rudyard Kipling collection. The other is being made by Disney and has Iron Man director Jon Favreau at the helm.
The screenplay of the Warner Bros. version was written by Callie Kloves, daughter of Harry Potter scribe Steve Cloves.
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