Why are there so many South Asian Tarzans?

Despite the canonical ERBU Tarzan being trademarked by his rights holder, it seems that the tv shows, comics, books and movies surrounding him are insanely flexible and have the shared tendency to blend into local tropical settings really well. 

Guess who is the definitive South Asian Tarzan? It’s Hemant Birje, who is also the definitive Indian Tarzan due to how influential the Adventures of Tarzan movie has become in the past few decades. It is a perplexing fact that while Adventures of Tarzan is definitely entertaining and ballsy enough to feature a Tarzan variant compatible enough to match the books’ own intensity, its long dormant (and likely also scrapped) true sequel named after The Return of Tarzan is likely just a rather bad cash grab, partly because of how troubled its production was and partly because Babbar Subhash wasn’t even there to direct it! What’s also not helping matters? Hemant Birje is one of the most infamous unofficial (live action film and tv) Tarzan actors. 

The classic Bollywood MockBuster also has a scrapped 2010s remake featuring Vidyut Jammwal and Rana Daggubati as their would-be portrayals of Bollywood Tarzan and Sunny Leone as Ruby Shetty. It would’ve been directed by Sohum Shah, but sadly got cancelled not only since it’s a proposed piece of shit, but also because Lord Greystoke’s rights-holder regards Adventures of Tarzan as an unauthorised localisation. It later on grew into a so bad its entertaining conservation film named Junglee, partly because even its director had to retool it to avoid a lawsuit from ERB Inc. 

Anyways, there’s also a more family friendly, if still scrapped, 2000s Bollywood Tarzan movie written by Sohail Khan, which would’ve featured the notorious Salman Khan because he himself was a big fan of the Tarzan comics which he read as a kid. Hoo boy, why is Adventures of Tarzan still so cursed to this day? 

There are other Indian Tarzan actors before him, but they’re not as internationally well remembered. 

The retired Azad Irani kind of counts, as he was the most prolific of fellow pre-Woodstock jungle movie actors in South Asia, playing many jungly characters in a lot of diverse movies. His portrayal of a then all-new Bollywood Tarzan variant (modelled pragmatically on Gordon Scott as just Hollywood Tarzan) appeared in about 2 regular movies; Toofani Tarzan and Tarzan in Fairyland. In 1970, the late Chandgi Ram replaced him as Tarzan for a stealth sequel called Tarzan 303, where Azad himself was in a recurring supportive role. 

Tarzan and Delilah is a rather strange Bible crossover of sorts, which more likely appears to be in its own continuity than with other unofficial crossover movies. Since Mr A. Shamsheer was mildly popular with the Bollywood B to Z movie crowd at the time, it likely gained a sequel of sorts in another crossover named Tarzan and King Kong (featuring the titular wrestler, not the giant Apeman!), with Randhawa, brother of Dara Singh, as Tarzan himself. 

Although Tarzan Comes to Delhi is a loose remake of both Tarzan Goes to India and Tarzan’s New York Adventure, Dara Singh played a Bollywood Tarzan more akin to that of Gordon Scott in his later official films as Tarzan. 

Danny Sidak was the first Bangla Tarzan. He played the character in Boner Raja Tarzan, likely a mid-1990s relic. His successor is the much lesser known Rony, who likely played the definitive Bangla Tarzan in Jungle Diper Tarzan, which is famous for all the wrong reasons. 

A fairly little known Himalayan Hottie has played a Nepalese Tarzan who is relatively closer to Christopher Lambert’s beastly portrayal of his official inspiration.