Because production news, trailers, and promotional material saturated the internet throughout 2014 and 2015, many fans incorrectly tagged the upcoming film as a 2015 release. Consequently, the search volume for spiked a full year before the actual premiere, creating a persistent digital ghost that search engines still struggle to correct.

The film featured a star-studded lineup that kept the "Tarzan 2015" buzz alive, including Alexander Skarsgård as a refined John Clayton III, Margot Robbie as a modern Jane Porter, Samuel L. Jackson , and Christoph Waltz as the villainous Captain Leon Rom.

The mid-2010s saw multiple attempts to reboot the franchise for a contemporary audience, each with varying degrees of success.