Stuart Beattie on What to Expect in His New Tarzan Movie

July 20, 2009
Source: Collider
by Alex Billington

Here's a project that I'm sure most of you weren't expecting to hear about. One of the many projects that Pirates of the Caribbean screenwriter Stuart Beattie has in the works is Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle, another live-action Tarzan movie for Stephen Sommers to eventually direct. Collider caught up with Beattie and talked with him about a lot of his projects, but this is one in particular that we haven't heard much of recently. Additionally, Beattie talks quite a bit about the script, the setting and details of the story, and just what we can expect. As for its status, he explains that Warner Brothers is currently fine tuning the budget.

Beattie's Tarzan is set around 1933, "the time before technology." "It's the period of Raiders of the Lost Ark," Beattie explains. "It's that kind of swashbuckling, fun, I mean Great Depression–I can't believe it's that much fun–but you know it's that era of all those serials and everything that was so great and so popular. Big jungle adventure film." So in essence, it's a "fun summer spectacle," which does sound a lot different than the Tarzan that Guillermo del Toro once wanted to bring us. Coming from the guy who did co-write all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, that's almost something we should just be expecting.

"Tarzan is, I think, probably the most filmed story of all, so our belief in doing a Tarzan movie today was you couldn't go tell the raised by gorillas and loincloths and 'Me: Tarzan and You: Jane'-story because it's been done so much and it's just not interesting anymore. So it was much more big romantic action-adventure film with supernatural stuff and a witch doctor and lots of really fun stuff. And mythic Africa, like that deep dark heart of Africa stuff, you know, where the trees are twice as big and the vines stretched forever and the canopy is a whole world in itself and just really cool looking place to spend a couple of hours."

That does sound like a cool place to explore in a movie, but I'll admit I was only ever looking forward to a Tarzan movie when Guillermo del Toro is involved. Now with Stephen Sommers attached, especially coming off of all the G.I. Joe mayhem, Beattie's going to have to do a lot of convincing to get me excited in Tarzan again. Could this be Sommers' next project after G.I. Joe if Warner Brothers works out the budget? "If they reach an agreement, yeah. Very much could be." Who knows, though, if G.I. Joe bombs, they might want to find someone else to direct. I'd even be fine just waiting decades until Guillermo del Toro could get to it.

If you want to read the full transcript regarding Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle and much more, head over to Collider. We also published an article late last year about how this Tarzan movie would involve parkour and other high energy action, so expect it to be different than anything you've seen before, that's for sure.

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