Casting Call: Tarzan

In which we suggest who would star in the next big adaptation, remake, or historical film.

More than a decade has passed since Disney’s animated Tarzan, the last adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1914). Although the book inspired a slew of silent films and live adaptations, none of them survived the have survived the trampling of time. There have been rumblings of a new Warner Bros. Tarzan for a while—first with Adam Cozad and then with Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer—but it looks like one is finally going into production with four-time Harry Potter director David Yates already signed on.

As for who will play the man of the apes: Warner Bros. is currently chatting up Man of Steel‘s Henry Cavill, Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim), Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood), and our favorite fictional MMA fighter, Tom Hardy.

The story has been garbled and rehashed with each adaptation, but the general gist is salvageable: an expedition lands John Clayton and his parents on an ambiguous African coast and the family is marooned by a gang of mutineers. After his parents are killed, she-ape Kala happens upon the orphaned baby and integrates him into the ape community, naming him Tarzan (meaning “white skin” in ape language). The truth about his human parentage is eventually divulged, some antagonistic human force poses a threat to his ape community, and Tarzan is forced to negotiate his biological and cultural origins.

Click through the slideshow above to see our casting suggestions…

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