After acting alongside a mo-capped Andy Serkis in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Slumdog Millionaire actress Freida Pinto is reteaming with him for Warner Bros.’ Jungle Book: Origins.
Deadline reports that Pinto will take on a live-action role in the blockbuster pic, on which Serkis is set to make his directorial debut. She joins The Americans star Matthew Rhys, who is playing explorer John Lockwood, and Bad Words breakout Rohan Chand, who won the role of Mowgli, in the production, which will blend live-action and motion-capture to adapt the classic by Rudyard Kipling.
No details yet on which part the actress will play, but Jungle Book: Origins tells the story of an orphaned human boy raised by jungle animals including a friendly bear and a wise panther, so it’s perhaps likely that Pinto is playing either an explorer or Mowgli’s birth mother.
The motion-capture cast is jam-packed with A-listers on this one, including Serkis (as Baloo the bear), Christian Bale (as panther Bagheera), Benedict Cumberbatch (as villainous tiger Shere Khan), Cate Blanchett (as python Kaa), Naomie Harris (as she-wolf Nisha), Tom Hollander (as jackal Tabaqui, a jackal and crony of Shere Khan) Eddie Marsan (as Nisha’s mate Vihaan) and Peter Mullan (as Akela, leader of the wolf pack that raises Mowgli). Callie Kloves penned the script for the film, which is being produced by Steve Kloves (Harry Potter) and Jonathan Cavendish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age).
Warner Bros. is pitching Origins as a darker take on the story than has ever hit screens before, so we’re definitely excited to see what they do with it when it opens on October 6th, 2017.