Andy Serkis Says We Should Expect A Different Benedict Cumberbatch In Jungle Book: Origins

Jungle Book: Origins is in the midst of an increasingly lengthy journey to the big screen. The Warner Bros. project was shifted to an October 2018 release window last year and since then, we haven’t heard too much about it. 

If there’s one thing that we can at least look forward to, it’s Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance. His career is skyrocketing and if Andy Serkis is to be believed, fans are in for quite a treat when they see, or rather, hear him in Jungle Book: Origins. Speaking to Mirror in a recent interview, here’s what the director teased.

He said “Benedict’s ¬phenomenal. He’s really scary. It’s a grounded, full-of-rage, brilliant performance. What’s brilliant about his performance is he’s not just a black-and-white villain. Bizarrely, you actually feel his point of view. It’s quite a nuanced performance. You’ll see him in a new light. The Sherlock fans will be surprised, definitely. Ours is for a slightly older audience. It’s a PG-13, more a kind of ‘Apes’ movie, a slightly darker take, closer to Rudyard Kipling’s. It’s great to scare kids in a safe environment because it’s an important part of development, and we all loved to be scared as kids, so we shouldn’t overly protect them. Kids are so sophisticated, and that is why our ‘Jungle Book’ is quite dark. … It’s a story of an outsider, someone who is trying to accept the laws and customs of a particular way of living and then has to adapt to another culture, a human culture, which of course he should be able to adapt to, because this is what he is. So it’s about two different species and their laws and customs, and neither are entirely right.”