What do you do for an encore after helming the last four installment of a studio’s most successful franchise? You see if you can launch another series for them.
That’s what David Yates is set to do for Warner Brothers at least. After having directed the final four Harry Potter films for the studio, they have tapped him to take charge of their long in-development Tarzan film, based on the classic adventure novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Vulture is reporting that Yates is heading straight into the project and has begun setting up meetings with the likes of Henry Cavill (Man Of Steel), Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim) and Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood).
The project has been in development for some time as just one of a number of properties that the studio owns and has been looking to leverage into film franchises. For a while the studio had two separate scripts being worked on – one by Adam Cozad, the writer of the upcoming Jack Ryan and the other by Hustle & Flow‘s Craig Brewer. Vulture states that it is Brewer’s screenplay that will be moving forward from this point.
I suppose that Yates is as good as anyone to direct a new Tarzan film. He’s never really struck me as a particularly stylish director, but one who services the material he’s given with a high degree of competence. And while he has maintained a certain level of quality for the Harry Potter films, I would put down the books’ and the franchise’s continual popularity as more of a reason why the final films were so successful versus anything particular he brought to the table.
