Will There Ever Be Another Zorro Movie?
Zorro is coming back soon with a new 10-episode series.
Don Diego de la Vega, best known by his moniker, Zorro, is an iconic swashbuckling hero who has captured the hearts of audiences for decades. First invented in 1919 by pulp fiction writer Johnston McCulley, the character has appeared in numerous movies, television shows, and books, and has been portrayed on the screen by revered actors, including Guy Williams, Anthony Hopkins, and Puss in Boots voice actor Antonio Banderas. Nearly 20 years since the character’s most recent film installment, 2005’s The Legend of Zorro, many fans wonder if and when we’ll see the masked vigilante on the big screen again.
Since the character’s first documented appearance on film in the 1920s with The Mark of Zorro, the rapier-wielding crusader has been an instant hit with audiences. The Disney Zorro franchise starred Guy Williams and consisted of theatrical compilations of several television episodes spliced together in order to form a complete narrative. Though the series launched the careers of many actors involved in the projects and garnered a great deal of fanfare, the films are a bit dated for modern audiences, leaving most fans to opt for the more recent Antonio Banderas features, The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro.
In 1998’s The Mask of Zorro, Anthony Hopkins plays an aging Don Diego de la Vega, as he prepares to pass on the mantle to a young Antonio Banderas, utilizing the identity of the vigilante hero as an ethos more than that of a singular man. This change not only supports the character’s timelessness but allows a number of new projects to develop under the Zorro title in the future, allowing Zorro actors to pass the torch, just as actors of Macbeth and Batman have done in the past. Banderas’ Alejandro Murrieta went on to lead the following film in the franchise, The Legend of Zorro, which currently remains the last outing for the character.
Though no new Zorro projects have come to fruition since 2005, many rumors and announcements have been made regarding the future of the franchise. Catherine Zeta-Jones has made comments publicly calling for a woman to take on the role in the future, while Antonio Banderas has expressed interest in returning to the role in a similar capacity to Hopkins, passing the title down to the next actor or actress to take on the task.
It would be especially fitting for Banderas to return to Zorro, given just how much his Shrek character Puss in Boots is based off the pop culture icon. Puss in Boots first appeared in 2004’s Shrek 2, as a sort of tongue-in-cheek parody of Zorro, before continuing to grow and evolve into an iconic character in his own right, eventually establishing box office dominance with the recent outing of 2022’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
Since production wrapped on the 2005 film, many reboot and sequel announcements have come and gone, including rumblings of a Sony Pictures-produced film titled Zorro Reborn, which would see the swashbuckler as a post-apocalyptic vigilante, with Old‘s Gael Garcia Bernal rumored to take on the leading role. After spending several years trapped in development hell, the project was eventually shelved, with no new developments announced in years. For years, this also seemed to be the case for the Zorro television series, which was initially announced in 2016, though recent reports from Disney+ seem to indicate that the project is finally moving forward.
The upcoming series, titled simply Zorro, is set to be produced by Ben Silverman and Robert Rodriguez (via IMDb), and will serve as a reimagining of the character’s story. Given that the series will likely offer a fresh take on the character, it seems unlikely at this time that Antonio Banderas will be asked to reprise his role. Despite spending years seemingly failing to move the needle on the series, the latest updates state that Game of Thrones scribe Bryan Cogman has officially joined the series as showrunner, meaning the series will likely begin casting and filming any day now.
Regardless of the upcoming series, there seem to be no active developments on a feature film outing for the character at this time. There have even been recent developments that called into question who owns the rights to the character, as Zorro is old enough to have officially entered the public domain. For now, the prospects of another Zorro movie remain uncertain, leaving the character in a state of limbo.
