I was just wondering what happened to Craig Brewer (his Footloose remake has been in production so long, I completely forgot about it), and now here he is, attached to something that seems utterly wrong for him.
According to Deadline, Brewer has made a deal with Warner Bros to direct a Tarzan trilogy. The studio has been struggling to get a reboot/remake off the ground for years, and Adam Cozad is penning the latest version. Deadline is mu as to what that new version might offer that the other ones didn’t.
Tarzan is always a character I thought would be fun to see again. I’ve always had pathetic, sure-to-be-unwatchable wishes to see some of the really pulpy stuff adapted, like The Return to Tarzan, which takes the hero from the courts of Europe to lost jungle cities. It would be a lot more fun than yet another origin story of how he learns to read and make loincloths.
But Tarzan is such a relic, and I imagine the George of the Jungle movies (Remember that Brendan Fraser? The one who was always posing half naked? I barely do.) made a serious approach difficult, if not impossible. And that’s not even touching the racist overtones of the story.
I don’t even feel like going on and on about this. So many Tarzan adaptations have fallen apart before this, and Brewer seems like such a wrong fit, though he does favor hot and humid locations, and Black Snake Moan did have some major pulp overtones. But again, let’s see if this even goes anywhere…