Disney’s Jungle Book picks newcomer for lead

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No pressure 10-year-old Neel Sethi, but for your first role ever you’re going to have to carry a big budget Disney movie based on a beloved book and animated film. Good luck. Judging from your photo you at least have the completely adorable thing going for you.

After an exhaustive search of the entire world that thousands of auditions Disney and director Jon Favreau have chosen Sethi to play Mogli in the upcoming live-action (kind of) adaption of The Jungle Book. He’s never been in anything before so this should be interesting.

He isn’t actually performing all by himself as Idris Elba is onboard to voice Shere Khan, Scarlett Johansson is Kaa, Lupita Nyong’o is Rakcha, and Sir Ben Kingsley will be Bagheera. Most likely they’ll be doing plenty of motion capture with those actors and as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes showed us motion capture performances can be just as powerful as live-action. Sethi has some pretty good support behind him, but we’ll have to wait and see until the film releases on October 9, 2015, to know if he can fill the shoes. 

[via Collider]

Matthew Razak
Matthew Razak is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Flixist. He has worked as a critic for more than a decade, reviewing and talking about movies, TV shows, and videogames. He will talk your ear off about James Bond movies, Doctor Who, Zelda, and Star Trek.