Once a staple of Saturday afternoon matinees, jungle lord Tarzan has not fared too well cinematically over the last couple of decades. The 1981 Tarzan, The Ape Man with Miles O’Keefe and Bo Derek and 1984’s Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes, were both mixed with mixed reviews at best. It would be alomst fifteen years before Hollywood would try again, this time with Tarzan And The Lost City (1989), which would hew closer to the character’s literary creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’s vision of the character, but failed at the box office. Disney’s animated telling of the Tarzan story fared better, but still felt tepid in comparison to many other animated productions the studio was making at the time.
Which brings us to Legend Of Tarzan, coming next year to theaters. It has a great pedigree, starting with Harry Potter franchise director David Yates calling the shots behind the camera and Alexander Skarsgard as Tarzan, the son of English nobility raised in the jungle by apes after his parents are killed, and Margot Robbie as Jane, the woman who captures his heart. This film takes place several years after Tarzan has left the jungle to reclaim his birthright as John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, with Jane at his side. At the request of Parliment, he travels back to the Congo in order to negotiate a trade deal, unaware that he is about to become embroiled in something far more treacherous. Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Djimon Hounsou co-star.
Legend Of Tarzan swings into theaters on July 1, 2016.
