Oh, Benedict. Your voice of velvet smoke, rippled with good Scotch and poshness. You are a Forever Dong for your voice alone. I will probably see Penguins of Madagascar for his voice work alone – he plays a wolf called Agent Classified. And now he’s getting into the tiger business. It was announced yesterday that he will be voicing Shere Khan in the second scheduled adaptation of The Jungle Book. There’s one adaptation which has Lupita Nyong’o and Idris Elba doing voice work (Idris is doing Shere Khan too). This one, the Benedict Cumberbatch one, is being directed by Andy Serkis. Benedict is the first actor to sign on.
Warner Bros.’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book has landed its first voice lead, and it’s elementary. Benedict Cumberbatch will voice Shere Khan, the man-eating tiger who is the villain of the classic tale of a boy named Mowgli who is raised by jungle animals.
Andy Serkis, the motion capture king after pioneering motion capture with such roles as Gollum and Caesar, is making his directorial debut with the movie,
Jungle Book is based on the more-dark-than-you-think short stories written by Kipling and centers on Mowgli, an orphaned boy raised by wolves who befriends Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther. The tiger Shere Khan is a lifelong enemy of Mowgli’s, with each vowing to slay the other.
Callie Kloves wrote the script. Her father, Steve Kloves of Harry Potter fame, is producing. Warners’ Jungle Book is competing against Disney’s adaptation, which is fully cast with Jon Favreau directing. Idris Elba is voicing Shere Kahn in that version.
Cumberbatch, who is up for an Emmy next week for his work on Sherlock, appeared with Serkis in The Hobbit movies. Serkis directed second unit for Peter Jackson’s trilogy adaptation and also appeared as Gollum while Cumberbatch did voice and motion capture work as the dastardly dragon Smaug.
Um, are they both going to be cartoons? Is the Serkis one going to be half live-action and half CGI? Or will both films be like that? I don’t even care. I probably won’t see this one, but the idea of Benedict as a malicious tiger? Sure. That’s really great casting. I always enjoy the fact that Benedict gets offered so much voice work – here in America, I’m constantly hearing his voice on Jaguar commercials, plus he’s been doing one-off stuff, like announcing the start of the 2012 Olympics, etc. Velvet Voice Cumber.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.
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