[2][3] Prima considered playing King Louie as one of the highlights of his career, and felt he had become "immortal" thanks to Walt Disney and the entire studio.

[2] Following a legal dispute with Prima's widow, Gia Maione, up until she died in 2013,[4] King Louie was absent from new Disney productions until his appearance in the 2016 live-action The Jungle Book film remake (where he was voiced by Christopher Walken).

Peet left The Walt Disney Company on January 29, 1964, due to a dispute regarding the contents of his script, so his ultimate vision for the king of the Bandar-log remains unknown.

[8] Songwriters, The Sherman Brothers, re-imagined Peet's darker more sinister version of King Louie as a more comedic character based around jazz and swing music.

A slightly different version of King Louie appears in Disney's 1994 live-action film, portrayed by a trained Bornean orangutan named Lowell.

[16] In the film, Louie offers Mowgli protection from Shere Khan in exchange for the secret of making fire, which he and his fellow Bandar-log plan to use to take over the jungle.

In the Disney animated television series TaleSpin, King Louie (voiced by Jim Cummings) is a fun-loving orangutan who wears a Hawaiian shirt, a straw hat, and a lei.

He owns an island nightclub restaurant and hotel called "Louie's Place", located near but outside the protection of the city of Cape Suzette.

His hold on the island is somewhat tenuous, even though through his own ingenuity and with the aid of his friends, he has managed to avoid losing it (in the episode "Louie's Last Stand").

[17] The characterization of King Louie has frequently been cited as an example of racial stereotyping in Disney films, as some view him as a negative sterotype of African Americans.

[21][22][23] This was not the filmmaker's intention, as the character and mannerisms of King Louie were largely based on his voice actor, Louis Prima - a well-known Italian American jazz musician and performer, who would have been instantly recognizable to audiences in the late-1960s.

[10] In his 2004 book The Gospel According to Disney, Mark Pinsky asserts that a child in the current environment (as opposed to in the late 1960s) would not discern any racial dimension to the portrayal.