If Jon Favreau spun out a lavish, CG-laden blockbuster based on Rudyard Kipling’s collective work earlier this year with The Jungle Book, Harry Potter director David Yates will be gunning for similar success with The Legend of Tarzan, a modern retelling of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic tale that places Alexander Skarsgård as king of the swingers.
Releasing in the thick of summer blockbuster season, at least on paper Legend of Tarzan toes the line between a bona fide hit and a commercial flop, and one need only look at the scathing reactions to Warcraft: The Beginning for evidence of a VFX-heavy tentpole bombing with critics.
Nevertheless, in re-introducing Tarzan to a modern audience, Yates and Warner Bros. have welcomed the industrious Margot Robbie as Jane Porter, love interest to Skarsgård’s character who follows her spouse’s primitive calling all the way back to the Congo jungle.
There, they’ll be facing Christoph Waltz’s scheming Belgian, Captain Leon Rom, who seeks to bring ruination to Tarzan’s true home for his own greedy interests. Also on board for that adventure are Djimon Hounsou as Chief Mbonga and Samuel L. Jackson as George Washington Williams.
The Legend of Tarzan roars into theaters on July 1 in the US and July 8th in the UK.
It has been years since the man once known as Tarzan (Skarsgård) left the jungles of Africa behind for a gentrified life as John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, with his beloved wife, Jane (Robbie) at his side. Now, he has been invited back to the Congo to serve as a trade emissary of Parliament, unaware that he is a pawn in a deadly convergence of greed and revenge, masterminded by the Belgian, Captain Leon Rom (Waltz). But those behind the murderous plot have no idea what they are about to unleash.
