Craig Brewer developing live-action Tarzan trilogy

Two movies in and Craig Brewer has established himself as a filmmaker with a gifted ear for music. His first film, Hustle and Flow, won an Oscar for Best Original Song. His follow-up, the southern fried hostage drama Black Snake Moan, brimmed with the deep sounds of old blues standards, some performed by star Samuel L. Jackson himself. Brewer's latest is another musically themed flick, the remake of 1984's Footloose. >sigh< For his next project, Brewer is looking to do something totally different. About as different as you can get really, as Deadline reports he's just signed to write and direct a live-action version of Tarzan.


The plan is to relaunch Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic character in a trilogy of films, to be Brewer's next gig assuming he gets a script down that Warner Brothers is cool with. The studio also has a separate Tarzan film the early stages of development as well, with a draft being penned by Adam Cozad. So with two projects in the planning stages, it's clear WB pictures this a high profile, potentially blockbusting franchise.

Tarzan's first story was told by Burroughs in 1912, then released as a novel in 1914.  The character is a man named John Clayton, who as a baby is stranded in a jungle when his parents are killed by a wild ape. The baby is taken in by another ape and raised as one of their own, never knowing of his human heritage. Another group of people makes their way to the jungle, most notably a woman named Jane Porter("You Tarzan, me Jane") who eventually becomes his wife.The most recent film I can remember dealing with the Tarzan story was Disney's 1999 animated feature, which frankly I don't think I ever saw.  The most memorable to me was 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.