Sony Pictures is officially moving forward with a big-screen adaptation of Django/Zorro, bringing together Quentin Tarantino’s gunslinging bounty hunter and the legendary masked vigilante.
Based on the 2014 seven-issue comic book miniseries co-written by Tarantino and Matt Wagner, the upcoming film acts as a direct sequel to Tarantino’s 2012 Western blockbuster, Django Unchained.
To bring this ambitious mashup to life, Sony has tapped Academy Award-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland, best known for gripping cinematic dramas like L.A. Confidential and Mystic River, to pen the script. While Tarantino will not be stepping into the director’s chair for this feature, the project has reportedly received his full blessing to move forward.
Set several years after Django (famously played by Jamie Foxx) burned down the Candyland plantation, the story finds him continuing his work as a bounty hunter traversing the American Southwest. By sheer chance, he crosses paths with an older, highly sophisticated Diego de la Vega, the man behind the myth of Zorro.
Django is immediately fascinated by de la Vega; he is the first wealthy white man Django has ever met who seems completely unbothered by the color of his skin and who can legitimately hold his own in a fight. Django signs on to be his bodyguard, and the two heroes are soon drawn into a dangerous mission to liberate the local indigenous population from brutal servitude.
Along the way, Django learns from the older vigilante that slavery isn’t exclusive to his own people, and he even gets to don the iconic Zorro mask to help carry out their mission of mercy.
Hollywood has actually been trying to get this team-up onto the big screen for quite some time. Back in 2019, comedian Jerrod Carmichael was attached to co-write a version of the script alongside Tarantino, and there were heavy rumors that Antonio Banderas was being courted to reprise his role from the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro.
Unfortunately, the project lost its momentum during the pandemic. Now, with the rights completely smoothed out and Helgeland drafting a fresh continuation of the comic, the path is clear for the two heroes to ride again.
Casting details and a targeted release date are still heavily under wraps.
