Sony deludes itself into thinking people want another dang Tarzan movie
Sony has acquired the rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, one of the most-adapted (and over-adapted) characters in all of fiction
Aux News Tarzan
Sony has acquired the film rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, apparently with an eye toward making yet another live-action adaptation of the famed literary character.
It’s been six years since the last time Hollywood made a Tarzan movie—2016 Alexander Skarsgård vehicle The Legend Of Tarzan—so fuck knows we were due. Burroughs’ jungle-raised Brit-by-birth is, after all, one of the most adapted fictional characters of all time; more than 20 different actors have portrayed him in live action over the last century, with Johnny Weissmüller, who played the character from 1932's Tarzan The Ape Man through 1948's Tarzan And The Mermaids, the most prolific. (Other notable Tarzans include Christopher Lambert, who played the title character of 1984's more highbrow Greystoke, and future Vikings star Travis Fimmel, who starred in the 2003 WB series Tarzan, the show that dared to ask: What if Jane was a police detective and Tarzan helped her solve crimes in modern-day New York?)
But we digress! (Did you know Supernatural creator Eric Kripke co-developed that Tarzan show? He later called it “a piece of crap’ and “a hell ride in every way.” So that’s fun! But we digress.) The film rights to Tarzan—who Burroughs originally created in 1912—have bounced all over the place over the years; Disney, obviously, had their own animated version in the 1990s, while Village Roadshow made the last couple of live-action movies (including Legend) with an assist from Warner Bros. Now Sony’s got them, presumably in the hopes of achieving the perversely difficult task of getting movie-going audiences to give a shit about a character who pretty much everybody in the English-speaking world knows by name. (Disney’s Tarzan did perfectly well for itself back in 1999—thanks, Phil Collins—but the Skarsgård movie fell fairly far short of its blockbuster ambitions.)
Sony’s intent is apparently to do a “total reinvention” of the character, which, given how many very old, very outdated storytelling tropes this particular white savior-type is rooted in, is a pretty understandable starting point for any kind of new version.
[via THR]
87 Comments
It’s hard to imagine a character that has aged more poorly, and is less relevant, than Tarzan.
John Carter
God I hated that movie when it came out. The unnecessary and long framing sequences, the silly and impenetrable made-up lingo etc and the black hole of charisma that was the lead actor.But also, the whole thing about “Oh kids will totally want to see this thing that inspired things they like” was so off-base. John Carter was a property that fuck all people had nostalgia for and it understandably flopped. DC comics had an awful habit of this in the mid-late 2000s when Geoff Johns and others, high off successfully reviving Green Lantern and the JSA, decided that what the audience really, really wanted was lots of bullshit from the Silver Age, plus Barry Allen! Somehow they missed the point of why those two revivals had worked when nobody was all that keen on Barry, or yet another failed revival of The Legion of Superheroes or any of these other long-dormant concepts.
Agreed. And that’s a huge problem within that industry and medium: grown men trying to relive the era they have nostalgia for, with no concern of characters that took root before those long gone characters.
It’s a bit like when you see Americans particularly, talking about stuff like the Honeymooners and I Love Lucy etc in the present day and how there’s still a huge audience for them.Perhaps this is the case in America, though I doubt it. I was born in the mid-80s and have no nostalgia for either. I don’t think I’d even heard of Lucy until the mid-90s and that was only because of her role in keeping Star Trek on the air. None of her shows (nor the Honeymooners) were repeated on TV during my childhood. Plenty of other classic stuff from the 50s through the 70s was (I watched an ungodly amount of Bonanza, Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke Show, Gilligan’s Island, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and Rockford Files).I’ve watched episodes of both programs as an adult and while I understand and appreciate their key roles in the formative years of television, it would be insane to think there’s a widespread audience for them today.When that Aaron Sorkin film came out last year, I was the only person in my office under the age of 45 who had even heard of her, let alone had seen any of it.
Interesting. My wife is 47 and she knows about “I Love Lucy” and it’s cast, but she has no emotional connection to it at all and would probably never voluntarily watch an episode. It’s just a really old and dated show to her.
I’d argue that is probably the view of the very vast majority of people (at least those who are aware of its existence).It’s one of those things where fans of a property (particularly an old one) can sometimes vastly overestimate how much interest there is in something.John Carter, before it came out, was something I only had the absolute vaguest memory of hearing about, but I’d never read the books, nor had any kind of attachment to it at all.
Do you know who Charlie Chaplin is? How about Groucho Marx? How about the other Marx brothers that didn’t really get a solo career? I’m half being snide, but I’m also curious what other icons of comedy have been lost to the youth if they don’t know who Lucille Ball is.
I’m aware of all of them, but then again I also studied film at university.How aware younger people (and particularly non-Americans) are of them, I have no idea.I’m also in mid-30s and have a particularly interest in TV/film history but would any of my colleagues who are in their 20s have sat down at watched any Chaplin or Marx Bros films or any interest in doing so? I’d guess almost certainly not. Did any of them know who Lucille Ball or any interest in here when the topic came up last year? Not at all. For those who were involved in the discussion, she’s a foreign TV actor from a show that was on nearly eight decades ago, before their grandparents were even born and something that has never aired on TV in their lifetime.
What a dull take.
For me, going back to my wife she knows about all of those, but the only one she really cares about from roughly that era is Buster Keaton. Loves Buster Keaton films and actually turned me on to them.
I mean, i’m 50 and i know who these people are but mostly know Chaplin and Marx thru various parodies/homages. Have seen plenty of I love Lucy though.I’m not sure today’s youth would have seen much of Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, nor Abbot & Costello. Probably not much Jerry Lewis either
I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners came on all the time on Nick at Nite and syndication on random channels throughout the nineties which is how I remember it as a millennial. You’re also forgetting that then and even now, boomers are still heavily nostalgic for it and watch it. It still comes on today on Amazon and Hulu streaming services.
What people have nostalgia for can also be dependent on where you live and what was shown at the time.For example my fiancé is English and was born in the mid-70s. Her nostalgia is largely different from mine as an Australian and is far more focused on their locally made shows.We had Nick at Nite in my country but neither of those shows were on it during the era I watched it. That said, there’s plenty of other shows of their respective eras that I do have some nostalgia for.The point I guess I’m trying to make is that there isn’t a widespread audience for a lot of the older shows today. Especially with reruns having less penetration than they did.Of all my colleagues (all university educated white collar professionals who work in media) just one under the age of 40 has even heard of the older shows I love (stuff like Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, LA Law etc)Hell, some of them under the age of 30 have never watched Seinfeld or The Simpsons.
Maybe the case for you and Australia, but in the US, it’s different where aging Boomer/Gen X/Millennial nostalgia is strong. The major and minor streaming networks still carry the old shows from the 50s-90s. I don’t think they still would be carrying those shows if there wasn’t people out there willing to pay to watch them. I remember on the Tubi and Pluto networks there was a Married with Children and Head of the Class marathon going on.
If there’s one area where awareness and nostalgia has died down in the US anyway is animation and kids stuff from that era. No one under the age of 35-40 seems to be aware of or care for Looney Tunes or Hanna Barbera. No kid growing up today knows who Bugs Bunny or Yogi Bear is.
With regards to the Looney Tunes characters, that’s certainly not the case here.The Space Jam films did well here and it’s definitely not uncommon to see kids in shirts from that which have Bugs etc on it.
Hanna Barbera has always sucked anyway
Did you watch Flintstones cartoons? Because if you did, you watched the Honeymooners.
While I didn’t like the movie, and there are problematic parts of the character (such as the fact Carter was a Confederate veteran), I think it could have worked if they had done it differently. Steampunk was big in the late 1990s/early 2000s. So if they had focused on that (weird vaguely Victorian Martian tech) it could have tapped into that.
But, he was such a charming and noble unrepentant former Confederate officer!
I’m starting to think that the kids just aren’t down with Edgar Rice Burroughs anymore.
What about the ones that live in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles? Fun fact — the neighborhood is named that because it was built on what was once Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ranch named that.
It reminds me of Aaron Sorkin’s hilarious Studio 60 moment where his Matthew Perry stand-in gets a burst of inspiration that the height of frat comedy is Gilbert and Sullivan and that doing a parody of one of their songs is going to be the key to connecting with a youth audience on a 2006-era television series. Because if there’s one thing Generation Xers and Millennials loved in 2006, it was Gilbert and Sullivan.
I’m a GenXer and I know G&S because we did Pirates of Penzance as a musical in high school. It’s also how I know Rodgers & Hammerstein because we also did Oklahoma! and Carousel.And even The Simpsons have referenced G&S and R&H, so it’s not like they are all that obscure even among the kids who weren’t theater geeks in high school.
Well that’s swell, Uselessbeauty, but your little brother is STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN!
Hahaha brilliant.Truly one of the greats.
To be fair to John Carter there is just one item in his story that can be fairly easily changed without changing the rest of his story.
Joe Camel
Tarzan’ll make the kids go ape, man!
Sambo.
That book gets ALL kinds of undeserved shit, mostly from the illustrations in one particular unauthorized edition. There is nothing racist in the text.
Fu Manchu
Though a film about Fu Manchu’s son did pretty well at the box office last year (okay, massively rewriting the Fu Manchu character along the way.)
Trump
C’mon, Sony. Read the room.
I was going to suggest they try John Carter again, but apparently James Cameron has said that Avatar was inspired by those books, so I guess we are getting John Carter movies?
I’d honestly prefer a better John Carter attempt being made to another Avatar film. The best thing Avatar brings us is advances in motion capture and CG visuals since James Cameron’s crew work their butts off trying to get his vision made, even when said vision is just a fanfic of already known savior narratives.
Are going to go for more gritty realism like the 2016 movie or the “Jane and Tarzan live a suburban life but in a treehouse” mode the post-Hays Code movies became?
Given the success of Godzilla vs. Kong they should just go straight to adapting Tarzan at the Earth’s Core.
I just hope they cast another Olympic swimmer.Michael Phelps has got experience with tropical plants and green and such.
I think they should lean in on the pulp fantasy aspects of the character – give us dinosaurs, lost Atlantean cities, ant-men and everything. A “realistic” version of the character makes no sense and is offensive to just about everyone, so just make him a superhero. And cast Regé-Jean Page as Tarzan.
Maybe he can team up with John Carter, Smokey Stover and The Yellow Kid!
To battle Terry and the Pirates?
The late 19th/early 20th Century was still fascinated with Africa as a dramatic literary device and, unfortunately, it was a fascination of “how can we put our White Colonizer Entitlement on this” which begat Tarzan and a host of imitators in Pulps and Comics. In 2016 when the last Tarzan film came out, a friend challenged me and someone else to find one way in such a character could “work” today. My take was a comedic one and, immodestly, I think would be successful and effective. It was based on a glance at a single panel from an old Tarzan comic strip on my screen when I did a passive search for Tarzan images- and, in that panel, Tarzan is swinging away, saying to two African tribal members, “Men with guns?? Tarzan will go at once- to stop them!” The two tribal members are behind him, waving and smiling, and saying, “Of course Tarzan. Good luck!”
It occurred to me to invert that exact scene, only from the sense that: Tarzan is a buffoon and never realizes he is not taken seriously by the native people, by the animals, by everything and they’re actually half-hoping he gets killed but begrudgingly accepts him back when he inevitably returns from an adventure. He’s a moron and just assumed he was Lord of the Jungle; the other people are indulging him for their own amusement and, as he is the first to volunteer to go into violent situations, they’re more than happy for him to take the risk. I think a one-time project with that concept might be interesting. I always did think it was amazing that most TV/Film incarnations spoke Broken English whereas the Africans he encountered spoke fluently which also lends itself to the pitch where Tarzan has just been sort of coddled and led to believe he’s at all seen as the “Lord” of anything.
Fuck it, write the screenplay and send it somewhere.
I believe you have described “George of the Jungle”
Yikes! I had no idea that was the plot of George of the Jungle! A (genuine) thanks- guess I’m not pitching that to any mockbuster producers now
This is basically George of the Jungle, and you know what? The 1997 live action movie version of that cartoon has actually aged surprisingly well, to the point that it’s something of a cult classic among millenials. So I think you actually nailed how to do Tarzan in the present day, even if someone else thought of the same thing.
It took the best parts of the cartoon and has a refreshing sense of humour about itself. The only negative thing I can say about it is that it’s success probably led to that awful Dudley Do-Right movie.
I saw Greystoke in the theater, because I was a stupid 13 year old who liked a girl who liked stuffy British things and she wanted to go (also how I saw Amadeus that same year). I don’t remember a single other thing about her, probably because we turned out to somehow have even less chemistry than Christopher Lambert & Andie MacDowell did in Greystoke. That movie was damn ponderous, man.
Recently there was a death in our family. He was a little dog named Snuggles.
These guys are from England and who gives a shit?
Every time I have to do a goddamm DEATH dedication
Is Don on the phone?!?
God dammit, I asked that monkey paw for a George of the Jungle reboot. What a nightmare.
Why reboot something that’s already perfect?
One has to assume there are Tarzan fans out there, somewhere. I’ve never met any, but maybe movie executives are tuned into some vibe I’m not. It’s a property like the Lone Ranger for me, no interest at all, ever, and I’m old even.
…maybe movie executives are tuned into some vibe I’m not. I believe that vibe is a combination of cocaine and zero awareness of the world outside of a ten mile radius of Culver City, CA.
Eh, i think Tarzan has an enduring appeal as a vehicle for men’s adventure.The basic theme of “civilized” man is abandoned in the wild and finds his inner strength is pretty universal and timeless. The extra bits about that wild being in Africa, “civilization” being Victorian era Britain, talking to animals, etc aren’t really necessary to telling that core theme.You could just as easily make a Tarzan movie about an astronaut couple who die on a space voyage and their newborn son grows up alone out in space learning from aliens and shit. And hey, maybe he grows up on a planet with higher than earth gravity, so he’s super strong. Or his parents were in an experiment to produce super soldier babies or something.
You would think that Tarzan would be in the public domain by now considering the first story he was in came out 110 years ago.
Technically it is public domain, but the characters are copyrighted to the ERB estate. Which is confusing. I tried reading into what that means exactly and my nose started shooting blood so I gave up.
Tarzan and Pooh in…The Public Domain. They can solve mysteries together.
It’s the same issue with Sherlock Holmes. Yes, the oldest Sherlock Holmes stories are public domain, but some of the later ones aren’t, and there are lawyers who will attack you if they can show you used any characters or ideas from the later stories, so most people doing a Sherlock Holmes show or movie just pay up to avoid the hassle.
The Doyle Estate has been on a lawsuit spree the last few years (they even tried to sue Netflix over their Enola Holmes movie; Netflix won.) It’s because they know Holmes will completely enter the public domain soon so they’re trying to grab as much of that infringement money as they can before the gravy train runs out.But the party is probably over, because unless there’s a last-minute act of congress, all remaining Sherlock Holmes stories will enter the public domain at midnight on December 31st of this year. I plan to ring in the new year by writing a fanfic where Sherlock marries Dracula, titling it “THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME” and mailing it to the Doyle Estate.
And if the impossible ever happens and Disney can’t get lawmakers to extend copyright even further, in 2024 you can have Mickey Mouse join them in a threesome. But remember that’s “Steamboat Willie” era Mickey — don’t mention his white gloves in the scene where Mickey strips for his lovers, as the gloves were added later and will be still under copyright.
We’re one year away from Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse greeting people at Universal Studios, and some middle-aged Disney fanatics are going to be screaming at Congress for letting the poor quadzillionare corporation not have exclusive rights to its toys forever (the how dare you make a Winnie-the-Pooh horror movie outrage on steroids), and it is going to be alternately sad and hilarious.
God it rules that the public domain is a thing again.
I won’t say I wouldn’t read that.
“Tarzan” is a trademark, so although you could make you’re own Tarzan movie you can’t use the character’s name in promoting the movie or related merchandise. Good luck with that!
The Tarzan stories are public domain (at least the oldest ones are) but Tarzan is still trademarked. So there are some “Lord of the Jungle” comics that clearly star a white guy in a loincloth in African jungles but doesn’t say Tarzan anywhere on the cover. I’m guessing that the Burroughs estate doesn’t want all that much for the use of the name so the accountants think the added name recognition of calling it “Tarzan” is worth the cost of buying the use of the name.
When the John Carter movie came out Marvel had their official comic and Dynamite had a “Warlord of Mars” comic. The Burroughs estate threatened to sue them. Then the movie bombed and Marvel stopped publishing their version and then the Burroughs estate just made a deal with Dyanmite.
When I finally watched “John Carter” I thought it was decent, largely because I had no prior expectations that it would be good. That is the secret – I went into the new “Munsters” movie assuming I would turn it off after 5 minutes, but I was wrong. I lasted 35 minutes. It wasn’t the absolute worst thing I’ve ever seen.
My favorite Tarzan appearance comes courtesy of “The Far Side” when he is swinging through the trees imagining all of the eloquent things he can say to Jane when he greets her. Then he reaches her and to his great chagrin instantly screams “Me Tarzan, you Jane!”. That is about all of the Tarzan I ever need.
Isn’t Tarzan very close to be public domain? Wouldn’t it make sense to wait a year or two and then not have to pay to license the character to make the movie
ERB Inc. will pursue a a claim of trademark infringement against any unlicensed promotional use of the name “Tarzan”. Unlike copyrights, trademarks have no fixed terms.
I can’t even imagine how bad a self-consciously woke Tarzan would be. Self-consciously woke anything, really, but works of art that feel like they were made from a place of apologizing for what came before feel sort of doomed from the start.On an unrelated note: I just watched Tarzan And His Mate this year, and did a double take at seeing actual nudity in a film made in 1934 (pre-Code, but I didn’t expect that). Pretty jarring, although Maureen O’Sullivan was beautiful in a way that feels like it would hold up in this era, which isn’t always the case.
Sony should just buy George of the Jungle from Disney and re-release it as Tarzan. It’ll be better than whatever they come up with on their own.
Alternately, make a 2 million dollar feature length porno and release it in 25 minute increments on Pornhub premium. That’s the only area of entertainment in which Burroughs’s Tarzan premise can still succeed.
Yet the musical is doing gangbusters over here.
This tweet should be the last, best Tarzan content.
Just want to mention:John and Bo Derek’s take on Tarzan was weird. An on-screen father-daughter relationship should not be used as an allegory for your real-life December-May romance.On the bright side, how much keefe did it have?
Sony is constantly trying to adapt some shit no one wants.Its MCU bullshit for the last decade is a great example
Sam Reid!
Not interested until I get the Guitarzan movie
Only way this works is if it’s set in The Savage Land, Tarzan is killed by Ka’Zar, and it turns out to be a secret marvel movie.
The answer, as with all things, is a crossover.
I really wanted to like that Skarsgard Tarzan, but… it wasn’t possible. I kinda liked that Christopher Lambert one but it was muddled and oddly edited as I recall. Honestly, if I didn’t dislike Phil Collins’ music so much, I would consider the Disney cartoon one to be a good adaptation.
This could all be dispensed with if the MCU just drags out Ka-Zar along with their redone Xmen….
Tarzan as a character has longevity because, what the hell, cool, a superhero living in the jungle! (Although I prefer my jungle-dwelling superheroes to be Phantoms, honestly.) But the longevity is probably more due to just his recognizability worldwide.
I do wonder why they did a John Carter movie – there was never a lot of clamoring for an adaptation of that series. Although (and elsewhere here I am roundly disagreed with) I really liked the movie. A lot.
Every several years the major film studios have a lottery and the “winner” is forced to make either a Tarzan, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, or Three Musketeer movie. I assume they do it to appease the ancient ones.
In any case, I hope he’s going to be portrated by a black actor. We have enough white protagonists as it is.