Disney Dips Back Into the Indie Pool for What Sounds Like a Big City 'Jungle Book'

In case it wasn’t already incredibly obvious, Disney is a very forward thinking company. They saw the value in reviving Star Wars and pursued it aggressively. They knew how to bring their theme park rides to big screen audiences (and then have those new audiences seek out the theme parks). They foresaw a boom in superhero movies – and integrated cinematic universes – long before anyone else. 

But Disney doesn’t just know how to take something that’s already massively popular and make it even more popular. They also know how to scour the indie film world for major, upcoming talent. They hired David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) to direct their remake of Pete’s Dragon, which turned out to be a very smart decision as the movie is getting rave reviews. They gave Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) a shot to write a new Winnie the Pooh. And now they’ve hired James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) to write and direct a movie for them.

Wild City is based off of an original idea of Ponsoldt’s and while no specific plot is available at this stage, it’s said to be about the adventures of wild animals in Los Angeles. That may initially sound like a Secret Life of Pets riff, but this is being conceived as a live-action/CGI hybrid, which means you can expect it to be way closer in look to the studio’s other massively successful animal-based movie, The Jungle Book. 

The movie is likely a few years off at this point. Ponsoldt is in postproduction on the thriller The Circle, based on the book of the same name by Dave Eggers. He’s also still attached to I Want My MTV, a movie about the formative years of the hit music channel. So it may take some time for Wild City to materialize, but our fingers are crossed that it does happen.

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