Zorro Reborn to be set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

You all know Zorro – black mask, sword, fighting for freedom and justice and set in the Spanish colonial era of California. We last saw the character portrayed by Antonio Banderas and was close to the pulp novels of the character.

News from the LA Times suggests Zorro will be returning to the big screen but this time in a future setting. Can I get a facepalm?

A reboot titled “Zorro Reborn” is being developed at Fox that will remove the character from his historical California or Mexico setting.

Unlike many of the previous Zorros (real name: Don Diego de la Vega) brandishing whips and swords, the hero of the new installment will live in the future — specifically a desolate and post-apocalyptic one, according to a person familiar with the film who asked not to be identified. A Fox spokeswoman declined to comment.

In this version, Zorro will be less a caped crusader for justice than 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.”

The movie will be directed by Rpin Suwannath, a previsualization specialist who worked on a number of the “X-Men,” “Matrix” and “Chronicles of Narnia” movies. (Previsualiation is the Hollywood art of conceiving and generating images, usually for an effects-driven movie, before filming has begun. Visual-effects specialists are hot generally, with Fox recently setting the viz kid Tim Miller to direct “Deadpool.”) The project, a person close to it cautioned, is in early development.

The “Zorro Reborn” script has been written by Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, the screenwriters behind the Dracula reboot “Harker” at Warner Bros. The Zorro film is expected to provide a juicy lead role for a young actor.

Yet again the movie business amazes me. You have a property which has certain aspects that make it what it is. Therefore you then decide to jettison all of what makes the character special to fit it into a perceived hot genre style of movie.

There was a cartoon set in the near future called Zorro: Generation Z, but I am not sure if it will be based around that.
I hope the apocalyptic setting is wrong and instead they just go with the spaghetti western style for a reboot.

Do you want to see a futuristic Zorro?