Warner Bros. Gestates Tarzan Films, May At Later Date Drop off In Jungle With Gorillas

To be honest we’re not sure who the gorillas are in this metaphor. Directors maybe, or screenwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, who are both being tapped by the studio to each write a Tarzan script. To be clearer: according to Deadline, Warner Bros. is commissioning two scripts for two Tarzan movies.

This has been done before on big pictures, and usually the studio makes a decision on which way to go when they both come in. Sometimes, the other script is the next movie in the franchise. But it certainly gives hope that Tarzan will be swinging in the jungle before too long.

I guess this is a part of the trend of superhero movies, that once we’ve plumbed the depths of comic characters, we’re going to have to move a bit further back and start fishing around in pulp fiction. The Green Hornet already went up this spring, and we’ll totally welcome possibly the 90th Tarzan movie ever made into existence. We just hope it’s the original, original Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan: Tarzan the Mary Sue. Tarzan the Edward.

Tarzan, the boy raised by apes who taught himself to read French in his first encounter with human language in the remnants of his parents’ jungle hut. Tarzan, the landed English noble who gives up his birthright so the woman who loves him won’t have to live poor when she’s got to marry another man. Tarzan, the guy who every other female character is attracted to but can’t have because his love for Jane is so pure. Tarzan, with his murderous bloodlust provoked only by severe breaches of morality. Tarzan, the physically perfect and intellectually extraordinary. Tarzan, the ethically superior. Tarzan, the white guy raised by apes who Burroughs paints as still more “civilized” and kind than even the peaceful African natives he runs into.

Tarzan… a product of his time. A pulp fictional hero.

But I digress, Burroughs’ Tarzan, like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, has been somewhat eclipsed by the way the character has been interpreted in film or television or parody, and I always find it interesting to go back to the original sources to see which aspects of the character were deemed fittest by the evolutionary rigor of adaptation to survive. And with Burroughs, whose works are old enough to be available free on Project Gutenberg, it’s fairly easy.

(via Screen Rant.)