Interview: "Twilight" actor Kellan Lutz talks "Tarzan"
The “Lord of the Jungle” is celebrating his 100th anniversary, and it looks like his return to the big screen will be part of the festivities.
Tarzan, created in 1912 by writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, celebrates his centennial in 2012. The character has appeared in books, comics, movies and television programs and is one of the world’s best-known fictional characters, Nerdage blogger Matt Price writes in his latest column.
With the “The Twilight Saga” coming to a close with today’s theatrical debut of “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” Kellan Lutz, who has played brawny but kindhearted vampire Emmett Cullen in the blockbuster film series, is looking ahead to taking the lead in Constantin Film’s 3-D motion-capture animated version of “Tarzan,” due out in fall 2013. (A German-language trailer for the film is posted below.)
“When I got into acting, I just fell in love with everything about it. And for me, to step back and ask myself what would be a dream role, growing up in the Midwest, I just love the monkey man. And much like my character in ‘Twilight,’ Emmett is the monkey Man,” Lutz said in a news conference I attended during the recent “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ press junket in Los Angeles.
“To make that transition to play the monkey man was quite, quite fun for me. And I just fell in love with the script. It was very hard for me to think they were going to recreate a Tarzan after the 10th time: How could they, even after Disney’s animated version? And when I read the script, it’s so much more contemporary and modern. It’s a brilliant script, full of comedy, full of action.
“And it is motion-capture, which was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done: quadri-peding, running, working with Peter Elliott on how to even walk like Tarzan, which is pretty much like a ballerina‑esque walk. And I’ve played football. So to break my dhun, dhun, dhun Emmett walk took a few weeks with Peter Elliott, and he was telling me how people lead with their chin, lead with their knees, lead with their chest. They roll with their back foot versus pull with the front. And stuff that I’d never really thought about. So we just did so much research.
