Neil Gaiman and Steve Kloves Projects Put Us at Three 'Jungle Book' Takes (One Includes Ghosts)

Chernin Entertainment's "futuristic Jungle Book" now has some company: Warner Bros. and Disney, too, are preparing skewed takes on Rudyard Kipling's world of unlikely community childrearing.

According to Deadline, Disney has just paid something in the high six figures for The Graveyard Book, the bestselling children's fiction author Neil Gaiman has himself described as "kind of like The Jungle Book, only instead of a jungle it's a graveyard." As that implies, the story tells of an orphaned child raised by a group of ghosts, who impart on him the knowledge of the dead. No writer or director is yet attached, but considering the subject matter and studio, hard to imagine Tim Burton won't want to at least sniff it and push it around his bowl a little bit.

Over at Warner, Steve Kloves is nearing a deal to write and direct a new, live-action take on The Jungle Book as well. Kloves hasn't directed a film since 1993's Flesh and Bone, but he's been busy at Warner writing Glasses Wizard adaptations for the last decade, and more recently worked on the Amazing Spider-Man script. Presumably this Jungle Book adaptation will not add "from the future" or "with ghosts" or anything, but who knows--maybe the spirit of competition will get Mowgli fighting some vampires yet.