Zorro gets the futuristic post-apocalyptic revenge thriller makeover it's needed for like a century now

By Sean O'Neal | April 27, 2011 | 5:56pm

Aux Features Film

The ravaging of classic literature to create more explosion-y “reimaginings” shows no signs of stopping, because let’s face it: If classic literature didn’t want to be ravaged, it shouldn’t have been strutting down the thoroughfare with its public domain rights just hanging out like that. Now two of the leading recycled idea men in Hollywood—Brian McGreevey and Lee Shipman, whose improvements on the past include the Bram Stoker spin-off Harker, the King Arthur “origin story” Pendragon, and Once Upon A Time In Hell, which retells The Count Of Monte Cristo as a tale about London mobsters—have remembered that Zorro is there for the taking, and are now set on transplanting him to a post-apocalyptic wasteland for Zorro Reborn.

And because theirs is the Zorro of the future, he’ll be letting go of the past—namely that whole cape and swashbuckling with swords thing, and instead becoming “a one-man vigilante force bent on revenge, in a western story that has echoes of both Sergio Leone and No Country For Old Men.” Which, wow, that’s a pretty tall order for comparison, of course, so naturally the studio has hired first-time director Rpin Suwannath, whose résumé includes generating previsualization effects images for the X-Men, Matrix, and Chronicles Of Narnia movies, and who will no doubt lend the production that same, signature punctuality that audiences have grown to love. Of course, Zorro Reborn is still in the very early stages of development, so there’s still plenty of time for something to stop production—such as, say, Antonio Banderas riding in to spirit away all copies of the script in the dead of night, thus saving our tiny village once again.