Jon Favreau’s upcoming, live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book has quite a few notable actors voicing the film’s jungle-inhabiting creatures, but one pairing of cast and character that’s generating a lot of buzz is Bill Murray’s portrayal of Baloo, the carefree bear who becomes a guardian of sorts for the human boy at the heart of the story.
A while back, the very first clip from The Jungle Book offered us our first look — or rather, listen — at Luther star Idris Elba voicing the terrifying tiger Shere Khan. The latest clip from the April film does the same for Murray’s Baloo, and provides a hint at what we can expect when the famous funnyman lends his voice to one of the story’s most popular characters.
Directed by Favreau, The Jungle Book is intended to be a live-action adaptation of the 1967 animated feature inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s famous story of a young boy raised by jungle creatures. Kipling’s story was first published in 1893. The script for the film was penned by Justin Marks (Rewind, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li), and the cast includes a long list of celebrated actors taking on the iconic creatures that populate the jungles of India.
Along with Murray as Baloo and Elba as Shere Khan, young actor Neel Sethi plays Mowgli, an orphaned human boy raised in the jungle who must learn how to be a man. The cast of voice actors also includes Scarlett Johansson as the hypnotizing python Kaa, Christopher Walken as the gigantic orangutan lord King Louie, Giancarlo Esposito as Mowgli’s adoptive wolf-father Akela, Lupita Nyong’o as Mowgli’s adoptive mother Raksha, and Ben Kingsley as the stern panther Bagheera.
The Jungle Book hits theaters April 15.
