Gaumont Animation, Studio 100 Greenlight New ‘Jungle Book’ Animated Series
German kids and animation outfit Studio 100 International and Gaumont Animation are joining forces on a new animated series inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book. The series, tentatively titled Jungle Book: Cub Club Adventures, is currently in early development and will explore Mowgli’s life before the age of 11.
Gaumont Animation, behind series such as Stillwater (Apple TV+), Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles (Netflix) and Do, Re & Mi (Amazon), and Studio 100, a subsidiary of Belgian entertainment company Studio 100 Group, and home to Maya the Bee, Vic the Viking, Heidi and Mia & Me, will be bringing the show to Cannes and the international television market MIPCOM later this month, seeking production and financing partners.
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Created by Josh Fisher, Jungle Book: Cub Club Adventures is being planned as a series of 52 episodes, each 11 minutes, targeting preschool kids and their families. The storylines will focus on Mowgli’s adventures with his young animal friends in the jungle, a period before we meet him in previous Jungle Book adaptations.
Jungle Book: Cub Club Adventures will be a CGI animated series with Richard Rowe from Studio 100 International, Terry Kalagian from Gaumont, and Josh Fisher from I Josh Around as executive producers.
The show is the second project to result from the first-look deal between Studio 100 and Gaumont Animation, signed last year, following the animated series Ash, produced in collaboration with BigChild Entertainment. Under the agreement, the French and German companies will co-produce and distribute a slate of animated, kids’ and family TV series and films.
Kipling’s The Jungle Book, first published in 1894 and long out of copyright, is one of the most adapted children’s franchises of all time. In addition to the many Disney film versions — from Wolfgang Reitherman’s 1967 classic to the life action remakes by Stephen Sommers (in 1994), Nick Mark (1998) and Jon Favreau (2016) — there is a United Artists’ live-action version from 1942, directed by Zoltan Korda, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018), a darker take on the tale from Andy Serkis for Netflix and Warner Bros., and even a series of Soviet-era shorts directed by Roman Davydov that were released as a feature film, Adventures of Mowgli, in 1973.
The many TV versions include Chuck Jones’ Mowgli’s Brothers (1976), Fumio Kurokawa’s Japanese anime The Jungle Book (1989), the Fox Kids’ live-action series Mowgli: The New Adventures of the Jungle Book (1998) and DQ Entertainment’s 3D CGI series The Jungle Book in 2010.
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