In 2001, the Coen Brothers wanted to make a ‘Tarzan’ movie with Billy Bob Thornton as the star: “I’d bulk up for them”

Billy Bob Thornton said in 2001 that the Coen brothers had discussed making a Tarzan film with him in the lead. He was keen to take the role, saying he would bulk up and grow his hair long, but the idea never advanced beyond an early discussion.

The project would have followed the pair’s first collaboration, *The Man Who Wasn’t There*. Thornton and the Coens later made *Intolerable Cruelty*, but their only two films together were released before 2003; the proposed Tarzan story remains an unrealised possibility.