'Jungle Book' Movie News: Christopher Walken and Giancarlo Esposito Added As Voices [VIDEO]
Jon Favreau's live action remake of the Disney classic The Jungle Book has found a lot of success when it comes to casting big names.
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On Monday, Entertainment Weekly reported that a couple more notable actors have joined the film to voice two key characters. Christopher Walken and Giancarlo Esposito have both signed on to take part in this movie.
Walken, who will also be playing Captain Hook in NBC's live version of Peter Pan, will voice King Louie, an ape. Esposito, who is best known for playing chicken impresario Gus Fring on AMC's Breaking Bad, will be voicing Akela, the lead wolf of the pack that adopts Mowgli, a human, as one of their own. If you are not familiar with this tale, yes it is about a boy raised by wolves and surrounded by a bunch of talking animals. The unknown Neel Sethi will play Mowgli, the only actor in the film that will appear in the flesh.
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Esposito and Walken join Ben Kingsley as Bagheera the panther, Lupita N'yongo as Raksha the wolf, Scarlett Johansson as the hypnotic snake Kaa, and Idris Elba as Shere Khan, the villainous tiger. There will presumably be more cast announcements to come, as nobody has been cast as Baloo yet, and everybody knows Baloo because he's the one who sang "The Bare Necessities" in the animated Disney version.
While most of these actors will only be appearing with their voices, this is still an impressive cast that has the film moving in the right direction.
