Spill Your Scoop!
If you have a story about the filming of The Jungle Book in South Carolina, let us know.
The Jungle Book: Overview
Director – Stephen Sommers
Cast – Jason Scott Lee, Cary Elwes, Lena Headey, Sam Neill, John Cleese
Genre – Adventure, Family
Plot – A live-action rendering of Rudyard Kipling's classic tale of Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves in the jungles of India.
The Jungle Book: SC Locations
Lush jungle scenes were shot on Fripp Island, nearly 8,000 miles away from India where the story took place.
Catering, wardrobe, and make-up headquarters were stationed near the Fripp Island Marina.
The Jungle Book: Fun Facts
Part of the land on Fripp Island used in the film was later developed into the Ocean Creek golf course by PGA golfer Davis Love III.
Many jungle scenes were shot in SC. Scenes with animals were shot in on Fripp Island, in Tennessee and one scene was partially done in India.
$70,000 of the production cost was used to pay for water just to keep the crew hydrated.
The Jungle Book: Fun Facts
William S. Murray III shares his fascinating account of working on the film:
"I worked on the 1994 Disney production of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and we did use animals on both the Fripp Island location as well as the Tennessee location. We shot in Tennessee for all the mountains, cliffs and waterfalls at 'Fall Creek Falls, State Park' and 'Lost Creek Falls and Cave'. Then the production moved over to Fripp Island and we shot scenes that called for lakes and deep jungle stuff. The jungle camp set was built on Fripp Island and we shot a night scene there where a tiger attacks a soldier and runs amok through the camp. In reality the soldier was played by one of the tiger's handlers. This is a pivotal scene in the film when young Mowgli is carried off in a horse drawn wagon that catches fire and explodes in the distance leaving everyone to believe him dead. I was on the special effects crew. To emphasize the sense of chaos we used all sorts of fire effects and had people, horses and even elephants running through portions of the set."
"Incidentally, shortly before we filmed this scene, the president of the Disney company, Frank Wells, was killed in a helicopter accident in Nevada. Mr. Wells' grieving son, I believe his name was Kevin, came to our set and wanted to appear in a scene. They created some business for him to do as a young soldier drinking coffee by a campfire and 'hearing something' which was intended to open this tiger attack scene but unfortunately, none of that footage was used in the final cut of the film. We also did an elephant caravan scene near a lake on Fripp Island and even shot some stuff with the young Mowgli and the panther (which was actually a black leopard)."
"While shooting The Jungle Book on Fripp Island I met several crew members who had recently worked on something called Forrest Gump. The Jungle Book 'greensman' (the guy responsible for dressing the set up with tropical plants and foliage) Dan Gillooly told me to look for him when the Gump movie came out. They used him as a helicopter gunner in the shot that introduces the Vietnam sequence. The camera pans up from all the green 'jungle' below up past him the 'greensman' dressed as a soldier holding a machine gun and settles on Forrest and Bubba sitting next to him."
"I have seen promotional material for Ocean Creek golf course that states, "The landscape is so wonderful that it attracted movie producers to film scenes from Forrest Gump and Disney's live action version of The Jungle Book." This is only half true as I was told at the time that they chose to shoot on Fripp Island because we had permission to burn and blow up just about anything as it was all scheduled to be bulldozed anyway to build the golf course. I think that golf course was about half way built when we arrived because we were under great pressure to get our filming done and move out so they could finish."
"Fripp Island was the last location on a long shoot which was already a little behind schedule. The director had become ill while shooting in India and working with the kids and wild animals had been a challenge. Another unexpected delay came when we dug a big hole in the ground on Fripp Island to do a scene with a guy sinking in 'quicksand'. Now typically this is done by putting a layer of material that floats on muddy colored water but the director wanted this quicksand to look more viscous and realistic. Someone had the idea of using oatmeal. I'm not saying who, but it wasn't me. So they cooked up about 100 gallons of oatmeal, filled that hole with it and covered it up so no critters would get into it overnight. By the next morning that oatmeal was getting a little ripe and the actor refused to jump in there. We wound up losing a day digging another hole and doing it the old fashioned way."
Movies Filmed in South Carolina 
