Zorro will be reborn in the Mexican form of Gael Garcia Bernal

So one of two competing Zorro reboot projects (there are two?) has edged its way forward with the casting of the masked vigilante himself. 

Gael Garcia Bernal (BLINDNESS, AMORES PERROS) will play the lead in ZORRO REBORN, but unlike past films this Zorro will protect and poor and downtrodden in some futuristic place that is neither California nor Mexico.  We’ve talked about this project a bit in the past, but it’s been nearly a year now without any news.  Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, writers of the upcoming Dracula re-imagining HARKER to which Russell Crowe recently signed on, co-authored the script along with Glenn Gers (FRACTURE).  There’s no word on how far into the future this story will take Zorro.

There is also currently no director set yet, but considering the sorts of people Bernal has worked with in the past (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, and Fernando Merielles to name a few) and the fact that he’s only attached at this point, I doubt he’d brook the hiring of someone like Brett Ratner.  Incidentally, the other Zorro reboot project I mentioned? Sony, the studio behind the two recent movies with Antonio Banderas, is developing an adaptation of the 2005 origin novel aptly entitled “Zorro” by Isabel Allende.

So what do you think? Does the character of Zorro have a future, so to speak?

Here’s a hello from Catherine Zeta-Jones, leading lady of the last two Zorro movies: