Garcia Bernal to Wield Zorro’s Sword on the Big Screen

Move over Antonio Banderas! There’s a new Zorro in town… And, his name is Gael Garcia Bernal.

20th Century Fox has tapped the 33-year-old Mexican actor to take on the role of the masked Spanish outlaw in the upcoming Zorro Reborn.

Gael-Garcia-Bernal

In the modern take on the Zorro films made popular by George Hamilton and Antonio Banderas, the movie will take place in the future during a desolate and post-apocalyptic time—not during the Spanish colonial era in the 18thcentury like in the original story.

“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,” explains the film’s producers.

No director has been hired for the project yet.

The Zorro story has been adapted into more than 40 films and several televisions series. The last film adaptation of Zorro was Michael Campbell‘s The Legend of Zorro, which starred Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Released in 2005, the film grossed more than $142, 4 million internationally.

Garcia Bernal has appeared in more than a handful of Oscar-nominated films, including The Motorcycle Diaries, where he portrayed Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

He’ll next appear in Will Ferrell’s Spanish-language comedy Casa de Mi Padre.