Bill Murray Cast As Baloo For Disney 'Jungle Book' Movie Joins Idris Elba With Jon Favreau Directing: Warner Bros Plans To Release Competing 'Jungle Book' Movie Two Weeks After Disney Version [PHOTO]

Disney has dated its live-action version of "Jungle Book: Origins" for Oct. 9 2016. Today Bill Murray was announced to be play Baloo for the production. Warner Brothers has a competing Jungle Book movie that will be released the 21st of the same month. 

Jon Favreau directing and Idris Elba voicing the tiger, Shere Khan. Kipling's original stories were published in 1894 and are in the public domain. Disney recently cast newcomer Neel Sethi as Mowgli in "The Jungle Book."

Christopher Walken will voice King Louie; Ben Kingsley the black panther Bagheera; Lupita Nyong'o the mother wolf Raksha; Idris Elba the villainous tiger Shere Khan; and Scarlett Johansson the python Kaa.

Baloo's character, a lazy, genial and laid-back bear, was popularised in Disney's animated 1967 film, in large part thanks to the song Bare Necessities. It is thought unlikely, however, that Murray will be required to sing.

The Jungle Book originated as a collection of stories, penned by Rudyard Kipling and published in 1894.

The upcoming Disney picture will see Murray and Johansson reunited on film for the first time since 2003's Oscar-winning Lost in Translation. The competing Warner Bros movie will be released two weeks after the Disney version.

The plot of "The Jungle Book" follows a young boy, Mowgli, who's raised by a pack of wolves, befriends an orangutan and a bear, and is later hunted by a tiger who believes that once Mowgli becomes a man he too will be just as much of a threat to the animals as any human.

The film is expected to employ visual effects, but will it include entirely computer-generated animals? That's unclear, but if they do it, I'm already imagining Elba growling and hissing for motion capture.