Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (Net ix) is a darker take on a tale that is most fondly known as the 1967 Disney musical and was most recently revived as Jon Favreau’s 2016 box-o ce blockbuster. Andy Serkis’s performance-capture version features an all-star cast including Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett and Serkis himself as Baloo. Donal O’donoghue meets Andy Serkis

You have joked that Mowgli took so long to reach the screen that you were lucky that your main actor, Rohan Chand, wasn’t married and sporting a beard by the time it was released…

Not many lms took this long to make: Gone With the Wind took four years, this took ve. I rst talked to Warner Bros about getting involved at the end of 2013 and shortly afterwards there was the announcement of the [Jon Favreau] version. For a while we found ourselves in a race, so we decided there was no point in rushing our moment. We were going to release with Warner Bros and then Net ix came on board.

This is a much darker version…

The biggest conundrum was that everyone’s perception of The Jungle Book is the 1967 animation. Many think that is The Jungle Book, not aware that it was a book

rst published in 1894 and is dark and complex. We are the book and that is what we have brought to the screen.

Why did you choose to play Baloo?

In a way Baloo choose me. It was the last part to be cast and part of me didn’t want to act but I also thought here is a part that I had ideas for, to play Baloo as a drill sergeant, much closer to how he is in the book where he is called ‘Iron Paws’. also drew from Kipling’s poems about soldiers and barracks room life. I