Dystopian Futuristic ZORRO Film Starts Shooting Next Year

Now how's this for a reboot concept?

The last known effort to bring New York pulp author Johnston McCulley's 1919 character, "Zorro", was in 1998 from TriStar Pictures with a sequel that followed featuring actor Antonio Banderas in the title role. Apparently Fox was on track with its own version of the character sometime thereafter, though it's been fifteen years since that was ever thing.

Now, word has it from THR that Lantica Pictures and Sobini Films are partnering for Zorro Reborn, a post-apocalyptic version of the classic masked vigilante to start shooting at Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios next March. Good Kill producer and Sobini CEO Mark Amin is producing the film which will still retain the core concept of the character, but in a near-futuristic setting, compared to the character's normal early nineteenth-cetury bearings as the defender of poor peasants and farmers.

Pantelion Films will represent the film globally month at the Toronto International Film Festival while the production searches for a director.

All sorts of things come to mind when it comes to imagining this kind of character in such a modern setting. From period action adventure to a sci-fi execution is somewhat of a huge jump, but I can picture this might work in terms of what little details are applied to make it so; Zorro riding a motorcycle instead of a horse? A multi-purposed sword? Who knows?

At any rate, this is happening, so watch this space!