First Photos of Margot Robbie and Alexander Skarsgård In THE LEGEND OF TARZAN
Today we get our first look at Margot Robbie as Jane and Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan in Warner Bros. live action film The Legend of Tarzan. Harry Potter director David Yates is helming the movie, and thanks to USA Today, we also have some new details on the story. Here's their breakdown:
Legend takes a different approach to Tarzan than [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’ 1910s writings, the 1930s Johnny Weissmuller movies and other pop-culture adaptations that focused on the man being raised by simians and becoming lord of the jungle. Instead, the movie finds John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, a decade removed from his home in the Congo and fully entrenched as a British gentleman in 1880s Victorian London, with his beloved wife Jane (Margot Robbie) by his side.
He’s left his African home behind — his early days are seen in flashbacks — but is constantly reminded of his earlier exploits and gets invited back as an emissary of Parliament. While hesitant at first, Tarzan eventually returns to the Congo, old friends as well as Jane are put in serious danger, and his latest cliff-jumping, vine-swinging story kicks off from there.
Skarsgård, who is rocking some pretty crazy-looking abs in the image below talks about the film:
“It’s almost the opposite of the classic tale, where it’s about taming the beast. This is about a man who’s holding back and slowly as you peel off the layers, he reverts back to a more animalistic state and lets that side of his personality out.”
Yates also talks about the characters in the movie. He describes Jane as being “in no way a passive partner to Tarzan. She’s a really strong, assertive, beautifully knowledgeable, very sexy modern woman who can more than look after herself.” As far as Tarzan's physique is concerned he explains that "Tarzan needs muscles, but it’s more a leaner, longer, more vertical modern man than the square-jawed stereotype we’re used to.”
The rest of the cast includes Djimon Hounsou as Chief Mbonga, Samuel L. Jackson as the real-life figure George Washington Williams, and Christoph Waltz as the Belgian antagonist Captain Leon Rom.
The movie is set to be released on July 1st, 2016, and the director adds this last bit of info, “In a way, it’s a story of two human beings and how they save each other.” Yates is a talented director, and I'm excited to see how The Legend of Tarzan turns out.