The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions. Based on Rudyard Kipling's 1894 book of the same title, it is the 19th Disney animated feature film. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, it is the final Disney animated film to be produced by Walt Disney, who died during its production, and the first Disney animated film to be released after his death. The plot follows Mowgli, a feral child raised in the Indian jungle by wolves, as his friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear try to convince him to leave the jungle before the evil tiger Shere Khan arrives.

The early versions of both the screenplay and the soundtrack followed Kipling's work more closely, with a dramatic, dark, and sinister tone which Disney did not want in his family film, leading to writer Bill Peet and songwriter Terry Gilkyson being replaced. The casting employed famous actors and musicians Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, George Sanders and Louis Prima, as well as Disney regulars such as Sterling Holloway, J. Pat O'Malley and Verna Felton, and the director's son, Bruce Reitherman, as Mowgli.

The Jungle Book was released on October 18, 1967, to positive reception, with acclaim for its soundtrack, featuring five songs by the Sherman Brothers and one by Gilkyson, "The Bare Necessities". With a gross of $23.8 million worldwide, the film initially became Disney's second-highest-grossing animated film in the United States and Canada, the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1967, and was also successful during its re-releases. The film was also successful throughout the world, becoming Germany's highest-grossing film by number of admissions. Disney released a live-action adaptation in 1994 and an animated sequel, The Jungle Book 2, in 2003; a live-action/CGI hybrid remake directed by Jon Favreau was released in 2016, with a sequel to that film in development.