Disney announced a mess of release dates today, including two of their big remakes, THE JUNGLE BOOK and PETE'S DRAGON.
Jon Favreau's THE JUNGLE BOOK, featuring a voice cast including Bill Murray, Christopher Walken (both pictured above), Scarlett Johansson, and Lupita Nyong'o, has been pushed back six months to April 15, 2016. That month is currently family-movie-free (unless you count the KStew-less SNOW WHITE sequel, THE HUNTSMAN), and the only other thing currently scheduled for the 15th is THE BEST MAN WEDDING. This gives them more time to both perfect the extensive motion-capture VFX work and to be able to show off said work in a heathily lengthy marketing rollout.
The David Lowry-directed PETE'S DRAGON remake, which just added Michael C. Hall and Wes Bentley to its cast, will debut four months after THE JUNGLE BOOK, on August 12th. This is a little more questionable: even if it's typically cooler in terms of B.O. than July and June, August is usually prime territory for family-friendly fare, and tentpoles in general. A week prior to the 12th, you have SUICIDE SQUAD and, much more problematically, the third SMURFS movie, and a week later, you have Focus Features more low-key KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS. On the 12th itself, you have Universal's supernatural action flick SPECTRAL, which will probably be skewing younger than, say, THE BEST MAN WEDDING.
I don't think PETE'S DRAGON currently has the kind of cultural cachet to get scores of parents to bring their children out en masse, but I'm thinking this release date is a sign that Disney's got confidence in their boy-befriends-a-dragon live-action/CGI hybrid. With the right trailer, I could see a nation of kids dying to see this, and having the 2016 version of our childhood dreams of riding Falcor in THE NEVERENDING STORY.
Anyone excited for this duo of Disney remakes?
THE JUNGLE BOOK makes you forget about your worries and your strife on April 15th, 2016, while PETE'S DRAGON flies you out of your sleepy fisherman's town on August 12th, 2016.
