In the latest sign of the seismic changes afoot in the Hollywood jungle, Netflix has acquired the rights to Andy Serkis’ Mowgli from Warner Bros. in a deal that marks its biggest acquisition of a finished film to date.
Previously slated to hit theatres in October, Serkis’ live-action/CG retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book now will debut simultaneously on Netflix’s streaming platform and as a 3-D theatrical release some time in 2019.
Best-known for his performance-capture work as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films, Serkis is making his directorial debut with the film, which follows on the heels of director Jon Favreau’s 2016 live-action remake of The Jungle Book and takes a decidedly grittier approach to the story.
Favreau’s film proved a smash for Walt Disney Studios, grossing more than $966 million worldwide. Serkis’ film has had a rockier road to release. It originally was scheduled to open the same year, under the title Jungle Book: Origins, but the release date was first pushed to 2017 to allow for more time to work on visual effects, and then pushed to 2018.
In shifting to Netflix, Mowgli - which features performance-capture works from a star-studded cast including Serkis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale - will be able to avoid what would have been inevitable box office comparisons to Disney’s film.
“It’s a relief not to have the pressure,” Serkis told Deadline, which first reported news of the deal. “What excites me most is the forward-thinking at Netflix in how to present this, and the message of the movie. They understand this is a darker telling that doesn’t fit it into a four-quadrant slot.”
Netflix has previously picked up the rights to midsize studio films such as Paramount’s The Cloverfield Paradox and Universal’s sci-fi thriller Extinction, as well as numerous smaller independent films, and has begun producing its own larger-scale movies, like the Will Smith action-fantasy Bright.
But while the exact scale of the Mowgli deal has not been disclosed, it undoubtedly marks the streaming service’s largest acquisition of a studio film to date, marking another milestone in the continuing evolution of a new film distribution ecosystem.
