Tarzan: Sony Pictures is said to have secured film rights

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White Jungle Ruler: Lex Barker in »Tarzan and the Slave Girl« (1950)

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Rights Managed / imago images/Mary Evans

The Sony Pictures film studio ended up in the jungle when it was looking for material for a new film franchise: According to information from the industry journal "Hollywood Reporter", the company bought the rights to the Tarzan stories from the descendants of its inventor Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The Sony studio has not yet commented on the matter.

Nobody knows exactly what a modern Tarzan film series could look like.

So far there are no details about the planned stories, nor a main actor or director.

On the other hand, it seems clear that it won't be easy to let this character reach for vines even remotely woke.

The material, which Burroughs first published as a serialized novel in »The All-Story« magazine from 1912, is full of themes that are problematic for today's audience: his Tarzan is a white-skinned, blue-blooded man who rises to become the »king of the jungle«, relatives lynches local tribes, and of course can only fall in love when a white woman turns up with Jane.

Racism, chauvinism, colonialism - there is hardly a topic missing that is subject to a critical reassessment today.

From 1918, Burroughs' immensely successful novels were filmed, with »Tarzan, the Ape Man« in 1932, the first adventure film starring Johnny Weissmüller.

This began the most successful Tarzan film series to date, which produced twelve films by the end of the 1940s.

In Germany, the first film was banned in 1934 at the instigation of the National Socialists, but Weissmüller's films found viewers on German television well into the 1990s.

The German line of dialogue »Ich Tarzan, Du Jane« (which was never used in the original) and Weissmüller's shrill yodeling jungle call also went down in the pop canon in Germany.

In later cinematic adaptations, for example, Old Shatterhand actor Lex Barker played the muscle man, and in 1981 a slightly erotically spiced up version with Bo Derek as Jane caused a stir (many critics, however, thought »Tarzan – Lord of the Jungle« was unbearable).

The last serious film adaptation was 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, in which Christopher Lambert played the leading role.

The film could serve as a basis for a critical examination of the material.

Civilization weariness, the problematic relationship between man and nature and the abysses of the British nobility were the focus of a dramatic, gloomy film.

However, it is uncertain whether a young audience will still be lured in by the old stories.

Anyone who didn't grow up with the old films has no connection to the material.

In 2016, a first attempt went wrong: »Legend of Tarzan« came up with modern animated monkeys, lots of action and a sensitively constructed story.

At the box office, however, it did not meet the expectations of the studio bosses.