ELEPHANT BOYDir: Robert FlahertyCast: Sabu Dastagir,William Holloway, Walter Hudd

Based on Toomai of the Elephants,

Elephant Boy was a collaboration between Hungarian director Zoltan

Robert Flaherty. It tells the story of a mahout, or elephant rider, who longs to be a hunter. Flaherty cast Sabu Dastagir, the son of a real-life mahout, in the title role.

JUNGLE BOOKDir: Zoltan KordaCast: Sabu Dastagir, Joseph Calleia, John Qualen

By the 1940s, Zoltan Korda and

business to the US. Their 1942 adaptation of Mowgli’s story was

studio United Artists, and again starred Sabu Dastagir in the lead.

THE JUNGLE BOOK (DISNEY)Dir: Wolfgang ReithermanCast: Bruce Reitherman, Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Louis Prima, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway

animated version, this 1967 movie established the tropes for generations of cartoon musicals. With a cast of popular voice actors, comedians and musicians, and the director’s son as Mowgli,

Disney animations such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and 101 Dalmations. Walt Disney saw Kipling’s themes as too dark and the resulting upbeat tale with its unforgettable melodies – released

occupies number 32 in the top-grossing movies of all time.

JUNGLE BOOK SHŌNEN MOWGLIDir: Fumio KurokawaCast: Urara Takano, Banjô Ginga, Hiroya Ishimaru, Yuzuru Fujimoto, Shigezô Sasaoka

A 52-part Japanese reimagining of the Kipling original that blended the

text. Adding characters and adapting others, the series was rendered in Japan’s intensely colourful anime style. It ran from 1989 to 1990 in Japan, and was released in translation into markets across Europe and Asia.

THE JUNGLE BOOKDir: Stephen Sommers Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Cary Elwes, Lena Headey, Sam Neill, John Cleese

Disney returned to The Jungle Book in the 1990s with a live-action version starring martial artist Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli. Despite using Kipling’s name in its marketing, it was a fairly major departure from Kipling’s chronicles.

ADVENTURES OF MOWGLICast: Charlton Heston, Don Brown, Ian James Corlett

A re-release of Roman Davydov’s 1973 movie, dubbed into English.

JUNGLE BOOKDir: Toshiyuki Hiruma, Takashi Cast: Tony Ail, Nathan Aswell, Chera Bailey

A US-Japanese cartoon version that went straight to video. Sibling productions of Heidi and Cinderella made up a collectable set.

THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK:MOWGLI & BALOODir: Duncan McLachlan Cast: Jamie Williams, Roddy McDowall, Billy Campbell

circus owner and an evil uncle to spice up the plot.

ADVENTURES OF MOWGLIDir: Roman DavydovCast: Sergei Martinson, Lyusyena Ovchinnikova, Stepan Bubnov, Anatoli Papanov, Lyudmila Kasatkina

Roman Davydov was a Soviet animator and artist whose work remains little known in the West

part Mowgli, which was released episodically between 1967 and 1971, and combined into a single piece in 1973. Davydov’s highly stylised, more sinuous characterisations of the cast of animals is a wild departure from Disney’s hyper-coloured caricatures, and the story

bloody original. It had a wide release in translation over the following

into English in 1996, with Charlton Heston as the narrator.

JUNGLE BOOK:MOWGLI’S STORYDir: Nick Marck Cast: Marty Ingels, Bhagavan Antle, Brandon Baker

Disney’s live-action feature misses the mark and goes straight to video.

Dir: Steve Trenbirth Cast: Haley Joel Osment, John Goodman, Mae Whitman, Phil Collins, Bob Joles

Disney waited a third of a century to make a big-budget animated

characters — and arguably some of the plot — from the earlier story, cast Haley Joel Osment, the creepy clairvoyant child from The Sixth Sense, to voice Mowgli, together with Hollywood

but was a commercial success, taking more than £95 million worldwide on a £14 million budget.THE JUNGLE BOOK (DISNEY)

Dir: Jon Favreau Cast: Neel Sethi, Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong’o, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken, Bill Murray

Iron Man director Jon Favreau was hired by Disney for a live-action and CGI remake of the 1967 cartoon classic, complete with iconic songs like The Bare Necessities. Relative unknown Neel Sethi has been cast as Mowgli, supported by Idris Elba as the tiger Shere Khan and Scarlett Johansson as

JUNGLE BOOK: ORIGINSDir: Andy Serkis Cast: Rohan Chand, Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Eddie Marsan

Warner Bros’ confusingly titled Jungle Book: Origins is scheduled for release October 2017. Directed by the legendary motion-capture actor Andy Serkis, who also plays the bear, Baloo, it stars the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch as Shere Khan, Batman star Christian Bale as Bagheera and Rohan Chand as Mowgli.

I wanna be like you…E The Jungle Book

is Wolfgang Reitherman’s jaunty Disney musical that sticks in the memory. These 14 short fables of anthropomorphized animals and naive orphans in the jungles of the

loves a remake, and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book — expected in cinemas this April — will be followed in 2017 by Andy Serkis’ Jungle Book: Origins

The universal appeal of The Jungle Book ’s avaricious apes, maternal wolf-pack and the lurking evil of the tiger Shere Khan means that it has been recycled for generations, but modern producers have to either confront or side-step the darker associations that cling to the books. Kipling was a chronicler and advocate of imperialism, whose interpretation of the roles played by the colonisers and the colonised in the British Empire is highly controversial in the modern world.

Lifetime gross for The Jungle Book

(1967)

Lifetime gross for The Jungle Book 2

(2003)

Sabu Dastagir, credited simply

play Mowgli on the big screen,

international star. The son of an elephant driver, he was spotted while out riding himself and went on to forge a career in the UK and

in the US Army Air Force during the Second World War before returning to acting, and died of a heart attack in 1963, aged 39.

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