Zorro reboot to take place in post-apocalyptic world

[Borgholio]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-v ... oot-815937

Lantica Media and Sobini Films are partnering up for the feature project that plans to shoot in 2016.

Zorro Reborn has been reborn.

The film project about a futuristic Zorro has found new life with a partnership between Lantica Media and Sobini Films.

Lantica, the media company led by CEO Antonio Gennari that works in production and financing as well as studio space, will finance the movie with a plan to begin principal photography March 2016 in Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios.

Veteran producer and Sobini CEO Mark Amin, whose credits include Good Kill and Frida, will produce the film.

Pantelion Films will handle international sales with sales launching at the Toronto Film Festival.

Zorro Reborn is a post-apocalyptic take on the myth of Zorro, the pulp hero created in 1919. The traditional stories cast Zorro as a hero of peasants and farmers who fought against corrupt and brutal officials of Spanish-held California. Reborn is set in the near future but keeps the idea of a masked and caped stranger taking on tyrants.

The project had been previously set up at 20th Century Fox with names such as Bryan Singer, Ricardo de Montreuil, Gary Whitta and Justin Marks involved with it over the years.

A search is underway for a filmmaker to tackle the project.

"This has been a 15-year journey filled with ups and downs, but it has remained my passion project over the years," said Amin.

"Every generation has its own Zorro hero and we’re proud to be able to introduce a new Zorro to this generation," said Gennari.

Albert Martinez Martin is overseeing production for Lantica Pictures. Cami Winikoff and David W. Higgins will executive produce on behalf of Sobini.

...

[Welf]

This is the most fascinating movie project I have heard this year. I will watch this movie. Not necessarily when I am sober.

[Metahive]

"Every generation has its own Zorro hero and we’re proud to be able to introduce a new Zorro to this generation," said Gennari.

The Zorro of this generation is called Batman. I mean, Batman's origin story even blatantly references it by making it the movie Bruce Wayne's parents watched just before they were murdered.

And Zorro himself is the latin Robin Hood. Heck, before Batman Jesse James (the fictionalized version of him) filled this niche in the US. There's also a korean version of this archetype called Hong Gildong who BTW has magical powers (so Hong Gildong could probably beat Superman, something Bats is always mighty conscious of).

Transplanting the original Zorro himself elsewhere just doesn't make much sense.

[Borgholio]

Transplanting the original Zorro himself elsewhere just doesn't make much sense.

Especially since that "elsewhere" is the overused and cliche post-apocalyptic grimdark.

[Iroscato]

*Breaks down in tears*

[Borgholio]

I'm going to go back and watch two REAL Zorro movies this weekend. The Mask of Zorro, and Zorro the Gay Blade.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

This is such a coincidence! I'm doing a remake of Winnie the Pooh where Tigger is the leader of a zombie horde that Pooh Bear has to mow down with his riot shotgun that he calls Christopher. I'm so proud to introduce this classic to the modern generation.

[Iroscato]

I just...I have nothing left. You know?

Nothing...

[Borgholio]

I just...I have nothing left. You know?

Nothing...

Neither does hollywood, it seems.

[Zaune]

This is such a coincidence! I'm doing a remake of Winnie the Pooh where Tigger is the leader of a zombie horde that Pooh Bear has to mow down with his riot shotgun that he calls Christopher. I'm so proud to introduce this classic to the modern generation.

Still a better adaptation than the live-action 101 Dalmatians films.

[Gandalf]

I rather like this idea. Transplanting a Zorro story into post apocalyptic "frontier" seems like it could at least be fun, and possibly even have interesting things to say.

[Darmalus]

I rather like this idea. Transplanting a Zorro story into post apocalyptic "frontier" seems like it could at least be fun, and possibly even have interesting things to say.

I'm in this camp. There's nothing intrinsically bad about the idea, so it all boils down to quality of execution.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

Zorro's defining characteristics are his nobility of character, his swordsmanship, his anonymity, and his defiance of authority. All these can be fit into a post-apocalyptic scenario. The real question is whether the Generic Grimness of "this is happening after the fall of our current civilization" will overrun the dashing gloriousness you need for a good Zorro story.

Personally I'm not so sure. I mean yeah, post-apocalyptic stories are usually grim and horrible, but you can DO light-hearted action in such a setting. There are children's cartoons based on the premise of "the fantastic world Our Heroes travel through is built on the ruins of the world we know today." It's common, among other things because it justifies the idea that the events of the story are occurring in a place that is not outright imaginary, but that is strange and fantastic in a way that a historical setting can never be.

[Kuja]

OK but consider the following: worst-case scenario we get a shitty sci-fi Zorro takeoff everyone rolls their eyes at and forgets about a year later leaving the Banderas movie as the iconic Zorro flick.

Best case scenario though?

ZORRO: FURY ROAD

[Metahive]

The thing is that the social bandit archetype simply doesn't work well in a world where all order has broken down and it's Survival of the Fittest. Robin Hood, Zorro, Jesse James and their ilk are shown to be rebels against a tyrannical and deeply-entrenched state lording over society with overwhelming power. Those roaming post-apocalyptic gangs and scanvengers that are most often shown as the bad guys in such movies just don't carry the same punch. That'd be territory for more traditional heroes.

Also, what exactly would make grimdark Zorro Zorro anyway? Somebody solve this for me, Latin American Robin Hood + Apocalyptic Wasteland = ? Where's the appeal?

[madd0ct0r]

so you'd have to have some warlord rising in the Apocalypse oppressing other survivors.

[Purple]

I agree and disagree. Basically I think it can be done but it requires making not the individual gangs but the setting it self your antagonist. Simply put, for a social bandit to work you do need to have this deeply-entrenched overwhelming meat grinder lording down over everyone. But there is no reason why this has to be a state. If it is just a fact of the world as such that everyone prays upon everyone and that there is no nobility and justice left at all than our hero can be that spark of light. In such a setting you can have a hero who by very virtue of being virtuous fulfills all the elements of a social bandit. Because whilst he is not fighting against the government he is fighting against the society.
Think of Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. He travels the land doing his thing, righting every wrong he meets along the way. And in a world where everyone has given up he goes around doing good because it's the right thing to do. It has all the elements you want. strength and nobility of character, a hero up against an unstoppable outside force. And action.

So just make a setting like this and frame Zoro as the avenging bandit that goes around fixing things and than rides off into the sunset and you'll be fine.

[Broomstick]

No, I disagree about making it the environment versus Zorro.

It doesn't have to be immediately post-apocalypse, it could be generations post the disaster with entrenched warlords now in control. That would set up a classic aristocracy vs. the peasants conflict that would allow for a Zorro/Robin Hood character.

But much depends on the execution of the movie - many great ideas have faltered on a bad script.

[Purple]

It doesn't have to be immediately post-apocalypse, it could be generations post the disaster with entrenched warlords now in control. That would set up a classic aristocracy vs. the peasants conflict that would allow for a Zorro/Robin Hood character.

That's the idea. Everywhere he goes the story is the same. Warlords have entrenched them self oppressing people. And outside their territory people are being oppressed by bandits or what ever. The world has given up hope for a society that is not oppressive. So here he comes, rights wrongs, fixes one society and than goes off into the sunset to fix the other 40000 of them.

[LaCroix]

I can picture it.

*credits are done, movie starts*
*Zorro swoops in on a post-apocalyptic marauder looting a corpse, sword brandishing*
ZORRO: "Consider yourself arrested, fiend!"
*Marauder looks, turns, and pulls trigger of his SMG, riddling Zorro with bullets*
*Marauder proceeds to loot Zorro' corpse*
*Roll end credits*

[Metahive]

Kenshiro is a drifter, not a social bandit.

Picture this, what are Zorro's most defining traits? Like Batman he's a rich dandy socalite who protends to be a foppish fool at day but who dons a mask at night and goes out to right wrongs. That's already out of the window in a post-apoc setting. He can't be rich socialite since society broke down. He doesn't really have to don a mask since there's no reason to conceal his identity. Fancy swashbuckling with an elegant rapier as Zorro does is also out of place in a future wasteland where cruder weapons rule. So we would have a Zorro who's missing pretty much everything that makes him Zorro save the name and maybe the whole "carving a Z into stuff" -part.

Again, what's the point?

[Ziggy Stardust]

That's already out of the window in a post-apoc setting. He can't be rich socialite since society broke down.

Post-apocalyptic doesn't mean "anarchy". All it means is that existing social structures broke down. There's nothing about the setting that implies that emergent social structures aren't possible. As has already been said a couple of times in this thread, this doesn't need to be set three days after the apocalypse; it could be a century, or more. Survivors will self-organize, it's a major psychological prerogative.

Hell, this is exactly what "Mad Max" is about, for shit's sake. An entrenched elite that holds power over other survivors due to a monopoly on available resources.

[Metahive]

Hell, this is exactly what "Mad Max" is about, for shit's sake. An entrenched elite that holds power over other survivors due to a monopoly on available resources.

Why would such a scenario require a masked avenger? Mad Max never dons a mask or pretends to be a supporter of the marauding gangs since that would be stupid. Don Diego of mexican California can't do much more than be a masked avenger by night since the power of the establishment is so strong and entrenched. A post-apocalyptic scenario with society on the tribal level at best offers other opportunities for the high-minded to affect change, like gathering followers himself and challenging the other warlords for power directly or leading them somewhere else.

Again, while I can see a good movie featuring the future wasteland, I can't see a movie that will feature Zorro who is such in anything but the name.

[Jub]

Why are most of the people in this movie thinking Mad Max when they should be thinking Dredd? Can you not see the potential of a Zorro like figure fighting for justice in a downtrodden area of Mega City 1 while being a member of the upper-class in the public eye? It's still post-apocalypse but it has structure and gives the hero a reason to hide who he is.

[Metahive]

That's not post-apocalypse anymore, that's future dystopia. I'd argue post-apoc requires to either be set shortly after the great disaster or feature a society that hasn't recovered from it yet. Star Trek's federation also had an apocalpytic war in its past, yet no one would call it post-apoc now, wouldn't they?