AceShowbiz - The first trailer for Andy Serkis' "The Jungle Book" movie for Warner Bros. Pictures is here. Officially titled "Mowgli", the movie is dubbed "the darkest telling of the beloved masterpiece." The trailer introduces the title character, played by Rohan Chand, a human child who is raised by a pack of wolves in the jungles of India.

Under the tutelage of a bear named Baloo (Andy Serkis) and a panther named Bagheera (Christian Bale), Mowgli learns to adjust to the often-harsh rules of the jungle and he becomes accepted by the animals of the jungle as one of their own.

But as he grows up, he finds out that he's not one of the animals and the jungle becomes unsafe for him. "My, my... How you've grown," the fearsome tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) threateningly says to Mowgli.

But there may be greater dangers lurking in the jungle, as Mowgli comes face to face with his human origins. "I'm not a man. But neither am I a wolf," Mowgli fiercely declares. There's also a glimpse of the python Kaa, voiced by Cate Blanchett, who says, "I think we can both agree, Mowgli, that you are something the jungle has never seen before."

Besides lending his voice to a main character in the movie, Andy Serkis took the directing duty. He compares his take on Rudyard Kipling's classic to "Apes" movie. "It's closer tonally to the 'Apes' movies than it is to the [1967 animated film]," he says. He adds, "It depends on what your gauge is. ... But I would say it's safe to take 9- or 10-year-olds. I wouldn't take 5- or 6-year-olds - it's very scary."

Serkis also says the film's tone is actually closer to the tone of Kipling's original written material. "That was the intention from the get-go," he claims. "We wanted to make something that felt authentically turn-of-the-century in colonial India, where Mowgli grows up as a feral child - an orphan who's brought up with wolves, learns their ways and customs, and then realizes at this complicated teenage point in his life that he isn't one of them."

Also starring Naomie Harris as Nisha, Matthew Rhys as John Lockwood, Freida Pinto as Messua, Tom Hollander as Tabaqui, Peter Mullan as Akela, Eddie Marsan as Vihaan and Jack Reynor as Brother Wolf, it was written by Callie Kloves. The movie is set for release in the U.S. on October 19.