Case Study – The Jungle Book (2016)
Who are the target audience? What do the target audience do? Is there a wider audience this film could appeal to?
“Every studio executive dreams about the day they have a movie that plays to virtually all audiences irrespective of its rating, theme or target audience. ’Jungle Book' is the perfect realization of that dream.”
Given that The Jungle Book is a Disney movie, the target audience of the film was, of course, families. Disney knew that millennial parents would want their children to experience the songs and adventure of The Jungle Book, but they also knew that with a well thought out marketing campaign they would be able to widen the audience the film would appeal to…
Director Jon Favreau made an appearance on stage with three stars of the film at a Disney fan convention in California and showed sneak-peek footage from the film. Thousands of movie posters were handed out and social media feedback was positive – Disney fans were buzzing.
To ensure older moviegoers would be interested and want to watch the film, Disney used bloggers and entertainment sites to make the point that sophisticated filmmaking techniques were used to create the animal characters. In addition, the first trailer featured numerous scary moments and left out the musical numbers and Baloo’s goofier moments to market the 2016 version of The Jungle Book as less childish than the original 1967 animated film.
Disney used a variety of strategies to attract male audiences to The Jungle Book. Adverts for the film on ESPN showcased the film as being ‘from the studio that brought you Pirates of the Caribbean’ as opposed to Cinderella. An extended 3D trailer was also attached to Star Wars: The Force Awakens which had an audience that was 58% male. An action-oriented trailer was rolled out during the Super Bowl so the fact The Jungle Book is a Disney film did not mean it was only appealing to females, as is often believed due to the company’s association with magic and princesses.
What major cast or crew are involved in the project?
Director/Producer: Jon Favreau
Screenplay Writer: Justin Marks
Executive Producers: Molly Allen, Karen Gilchrist and Peter Tobyansen
Music: John Debney
Cast: Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyongo, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken and Neel Sethi
The success of similar films recently
The Jungle Book film from 2016 is, in some ways, part of Disney’s on-going policy to create live action versions of its earlier animated classics.
In 2015, the year before the new version of The Jungle Book was released, Disney released a live action version of Cinderella, which had been previously released as an animated film in 1950. Starring Lily James, the film received mixed reviews and has earned a cumulative worldwide gross of $543,514,353. Though it is a completely different story, this version of Cinderella paved the way for more live action versions of classic films like The Jungle Book.
In 2017, the year after the new version of The Jungle Book was released, Disney released a live action version of Beauty and the Beast. The original animated film was only released in 1991, but was similar in style to the original Cinderella – a stereotypical Disney princess film. Emma Watson was the star of the new live action version which was immensely popular and has earned a cumulative worldwide gross of $1,263,521,126.
Pre-existing Property
The Jungle Book films are based on a collection of stories of the same name. They were written by the English author Rudyard Kipling and published in 1894. Inspired by his life in India, the stories brought the film’s characters to life – Mowgli the man-cub, Baloo the bear and Shere Khan the tiger are just a few examples. The animals are used in an anthropomorphic manner to teach the audience moral lessons in a similar way to the film – focussing on themes such as abandonment, freedom and respect.
These same ideas are echoed in the 1967 animated film adaptation of The Jungle Book. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and featuring the voices of Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Bruce Reitherman, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway and Louis Prima, the film also tells the story of Bagheera the Panther and Baloo the Bear, who have a difficult time trying to convince Mowgli the man-cub to leave the jungle for human civilisation. The film was made at the Walt Disney Studios in California and Walt Disney himself was personally very involved in its creation until his death in 1966. An entertaining, lively and touching fable, the 1967 The Jungle Book film provided us with classic songs like 'The Bare Necessities' and 'I Wanna Be Like You' (also featured in the 2016 film) and has earned a cumulative worldwide gross of $64,000,000.
USP
The unique selling point of the 2016 version of The Jungle Book is simply that the magic and wonder of the original 1967 animation remains in a film which ‘exists in a strange limbo-world between live action and animation’. It’s intense – the detail is extraordinary and everything is so realistic – and yet, audiences remain in awe of the characters and story in a similar way to how they did with the ’cute and cuddly cartoon-style’ characters in 1967.