Freida Pinto and Irrfan won't be at Cannes this year

Freida Pinto who has been a regular on the Cannes red carpet will not be at the prestigious film fest which kicks off on May 13 this year. She has committed to Andy Serkis' 'The Jungle Book' which will be filmed in South Africa. The live action fantasy thriller adapted from the Rudyard Kipling classic, features several Hollywood A-listers including Benedict Cumberbatch as bad cat Sher Khan, Christian Bale as the black leopard Bagheera, Cate Blanchett as the reptelian Kaa, Rohan Chand as Mowgli, the boy raised by animals and Andy Serkis himself as Baloo.
READ: Freida Pinto: Lesser known facts
Written by Callie Kloves, the prequel is scheduled to open in the theatres in October 2017. Frieda is keeping her character a secret for now. But having worked with Andy before, she wanted to be a part of his directorial and experiment with an entirely new form. Well, Cannes' loss is the jungle's gain! Irrfan Khan, another visible Indian face in Hollywood whose film, The Lunchbox, wowed the audience at the 66th Cannes Film Festival two years ago and came home with the Critics' Week Viewers Choice Award, will be in another part of Europe this year.The actor who was to join his 'Jazbaa' team, including co-star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, another familiar face at Cannes, will be in the company of Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones.
According to a source close to the actor, the shooting of Ron Howard's 'Inferno' has been pushed forward leading to a change in plans. This is the third film in the franchise that launched with 'The Da Vinci Code' in 2006 and continued with 'Angels & Demons' three years later. In this adapatation of the Dan Brown novel, Irrfan plays Provost, head of a shadowy cult group.
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