It takes a very special actor to be able to carry an entire movie all alone. Sam Rockwell did it for Moon, with only that unsettling-yet-friendly robot to keep him company, and Ewan McGregor did it for the last two Star Wars prequels, since he mostly had computer-generated monsters and Hayden Christensen to work with. Disney is currently making a live-action Jungle Book, and since there’s really only one human in that entire story, hardcore J-Book fans (that’s what they call it) have wondered if the studio would be able to find an equally capable actor for the role of jungle boy Mowgli.
According to The Wrap, Disney believes it has found such an actor in 10-year-old boy Neel Sethi. He’ll be playing Mowgli, a boy who gets lost in the jungle and is raised by wolves. A relative newcomer to Hollywood—with only a high-profile role as Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane from Game Of Thrones on his résumé—Sethi is taking on a lot of responsibility by being the star of what is essentially a one-man show. Of course, The Jungle Book will also feature Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, and Lupita Nyong’o as the voices of some of Mowgli’s animal friends, and the Transformers movies have proven that computer-generated characters can easily save a movie from lousy human actors.
The Jungle Book will be directed by Iron Man’s Jon Favreau, and it’s set to be released in October of 2015. That’s plenty of time to drop this kid in the jungle and see how things turn out.