Category Archives: Prose

Tarzan returns in a reboot for modern audiences. While these books have been available overseas, this will be their first appearance on the American market (where the character is now public domain, though still trademarked).

Press release:
Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, announced today that it will digitally publish Andy Briggs’s Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy and Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior in the US this fall in celebration of the centenary of Burroughs’s original Tarzan. The titles go on sale on October 16 and will also be available in print from Open Road on the same day.

Briggs said: “As a child, watching Tarzan on TV was pure escapism—an opportunity to be transported to mysterious Africa. A place that was a million miles from the drab city I lived in. Discovering there were twenty-six Tarzan books, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, fueled my imagination further and inspired me to become a writer, creating exotic stories of high adventure. However, I never even dreamed that I would be able to take Tarzan’s reins and relaunch him for a whole new generation. But now, as we celebrate the iconic hero’s one hundredth birthday, I am doing exactly that: letting Tarzan live again for new fans and old warriors. Once again, we can all escape into the wild.”

Tim Travaglini, Director of Children’s Acquisitions at Open Road said: “Andy brings a tremendous amount of passion and excitement for Tarzan to every page of these novels and has recreated one of fiction’s greatest characters. We are excited to work with him to bring his twenty-first-century reboot to a new generation of digital readers.”

The ebooks will include an illustrated biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the history of Tarzan, and Open Road will produce marketing videos centered on Briggs and Tarzan that will be syndicated to content partners.

The Tarzan centennial will be celebrated at San Diego Comic-Con International (July 12–15, 2012), and featured on the cover of and inside the Comic-Con program guide received by more than 130,000 attendees, and on panels both yesterday and Saturday. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., will host the Dum-Dum centennial celebration (August 15–19) in Tarzana, California, which will feature Jane Goodall as the guest of honor, author Andy Briggs, actors who have portrayed Tarzan on the screen, and a host of other guests.

Andy Briggs is a screenwriter, graphic novelist, and author. He has written for movies such as Judge Dredd and Freddy vs. Jason, as well asForeverman for Spider-Man creator Stan Lee and legendary producer Robert Evans.  Andy went on to work on Warner Bros.’Aquaman while simultaneously landing an eight-book deal with Oxford University Press for Hero.com and Villain.net. His graphic novels include Kong: King of Skull Island, Ritual, and Dinocorps.

Briggs joins Open Road’s growing catalog of young adult authors such as Jean Craighead George, Virginia Hamilton, Andrea J. Buchanan, Caroline B. Cooney, and Lois Duncan.

Title descriptions:

• Escaping a dark secret, Robbie Canler joins an illegal logging team in the Congo jungle. Now they’re under siege from a sinister force. When the daughter of the camp’s boss, Jane Porter, goes missing, they assume bloodthirsty rebel soldiers have kidnapped her. In Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy, Robbie sets out on a rescue mission—unaware he is being watched . . . Are the rumors of a feral man raised by wild apes true? And if so, can the mysterious untamed savage be trusted to help them?
• In Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior, a baby gorilla is snatched from its family by the world’s most infamous hunter, and Tarzan will stop at nothing to track him down. Meanwhile, Jane tries to learn more about Tarzan’s past, and must decide whether reuniting him with his lost Greystoke family is the right thing to do. But Robbie has ideas of his own. He has formed a plan that will get rid of Tarzan for good, and keep the secrets of his own past safe.

 

About Open Road Integrated Media
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media. Open Road has published ebooks from legendary authors including William Styron, Pat Conroy, Alice Walker, James Jones, and Pearl S. Buck.

About Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875–March 19, 1950) was an American author best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter. Tarzan first appeared in the story “Tarzan of the Apes,” which was published in the pulp magazine The All-Story in October 1912, and then in twenty-five sequels by Burroughs, a handful of authorized works, and innumerable works in other media. One of the best-known literary characters in the world, Tarzan has been portrayed by more than twenty-seven actors in more than eighty-nine movies—in addition to TV shows—the first being the 1918 silent film, which was one of the first motion pictures to earn one million dollars.