Several movie studios are simultaneously working on the famed adventures of Mowgli, first told in Rudyard Kipling's 1893-4 fables, yet again for the big screen.

The Jungle Book has already been adapted umpteen times, though the most famous version is still Disney's animated musical of 1967.

Nonetheless, this collection of fables clearly hasn't yet exhausted the imagination of picture studios in Hollywood and abroad.

After adapting Alice in Wonderland (2010), Sleeping Beauty, Maleficient (due out in 2014) and Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella (slated for 2015), Disney continues to co-opt the classics.

Justin Marks, who wrote The Raven (2012) and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2007), has been attached to script a live-action Jungle Book for Disney.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has put its own scribe on it, attaching Steve Kloves, who has adapted all but one of the Harry Potter series, to write and direct this project. As if that weren't enough, DQ Entertainment (Ireland) Limited is planning to start up its own features department with a 3D adaptation of the Indian boy's adventures in 2014.

For a thespian foretaste of this upcoming spate of Jungle Books on the silver screen, a musical production of the same just opened in Chicago on July 1. So the next few years are going to be chock-a-block with little jungle boys raised by she-wolves, along with happy-go-lucky "bare-necessities" bears, benevolent black panthers and bloodthirsty tigers. — HT