New Tarzan Movie Lands at Sony, Will “Totally Reinvent” Character

Tarzan is going to soar through the jungle once again. On Friday, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Sony Pictures has acquired the movie rights to Tarzan from Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., the estate of the franchise’s creator. According to the report, Sony is hoping create a new movie that will be a “total reinvention” of the character to fit into the 21st century. At this time, no filmmakers, producers, or writers are attached to the project, so it’s unclear what shape that will take. As the article points out, Tarzan is one of the rare characters that exists in both the public and private domains — even though Burroughs’ estate owns the trademark to the character, early stories involving him do technically exist in the public domain.

Created by Burroughs in 1912, Tarzan is an orphaned boy raised into adulthood by apes in the jungle, who later gets a culture shock when he meets and falls in love with an English woman named Jane. The characters has appeared in countless movies, serials, radio shows, comics, and television shows. Easily one of the most beloved adaptations is Disney’s 1999 animated movie, which has become a cult classic thanks to its star-studded voice cast and Phil Collins’ original songs on the soundtrack.

The most recent Tarzan adaptation was brought to life by Warner Bros. in 2016 with The Legend of Tarzan, a live-action drama that starred Alexander Skarsgard as Tarzan and Margot Robbie as Jane. 

“I thought it was a brilliant script, It’s a brilliant take on a classic, iconic tale,” Skargard told Den of Geek in 2016. “It’s almost the opposite of the novel, or most of the old movies. You see the origin story in flashbacks, you get to see how he ended up in the jungle, what happened to his parents, him growing up with the apes. But the main story is this Victorian gentleman who is forced to go back to the place where he was born and raised; a place he loves, but he’s also afraid of going back. He made some enemies there, and he’s also afraid of himself, and what he’s capable of there. And slowly, he reverts back to a more atavistic state. From a character perspective it was interesting to play, to work on that, that duality, the dichotomy that I think is a metaphor for being human. Being civilised but at the same time being an animal, and the friction that creates. Exploring that with David, and also with Wayne McGregor and the physicality of it, of letting the animal come out, in a way.”

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