Mask of Zorro is Getting a Reboot – And it Will be Vastly Different to the Original

The Mask of Zorro was successful when it was released, bringing in $250 million worldwide against its $95 million budget.

14:14 31 January 2022

In the era of regular reboots with modern franchise potential, it’s no surprise that filmmakers are turning their attention to The Mask of Zorro. It has been more than twenty years since Martin Campbell’s offering hit screens, and those who enjoyed it may have felt short-changed by the solitary follow-up title, The Legend of Zorro in 2005.

 

Now, it has been reported that there will be a brand-new version of Zorro, with the character set to be rebranded as an online hacker. Zorro 2.0 could be a fascinating take that will attract new and old fans alike.

 

Zorro Still Lives on in Popular Culture

Despite 17 years having passed since the release of Campbell’s second Zorro outing featuring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, the swashbuckling character lives on in the popular culture. The Mask of Zorro was released for Gameboy in 1999 is still available to play for free at some sites online.

 

There’s also the more recent The Mask of Zorro slot from Playtech, which is one of the exclusive games listed at Fortune Clock. The site is found in a no deposit casino UK list for its sign-up bonus where there is no code required. The fact that this Zorro game exists here among other franchised titles such as Sherlock Holmes highlights its potential to allure players to the reboot when it is released.

 

A Prime Option for a Reboot

The Mask of Zorro was successful when it was released, bringing in $250 million worldwide against its $95 million budget. It was also well-received by critics, who praised Banderas’s entertaining performance and the overall spectacle of the picture. However, it could be argued that the Sony Pictures offering hit screens a few years too early.

 

It could, perhaps, have benefited more from being released after the Pirates of the Caribbean and Marvel franchises. That’s because these helped to change the marketing model of blockbuster films and placed more focus on attracting viewers by using media on other platforms. They also dropped when the internet had already started to become ubiquitous in the west, meaning that the online world was a perfect landscape for promotion.

 

New Offering Will be Highly Modernised

According to Screen Crush, the new Zorro offering will move away from the themes of the past movies and get a modern technological makeover. The Campbell pictures took place in the 19th Century during the Mexican War of Independence, but the new title from Alex Rivera will turn the masked vigilante into a computer hacker.

 

The film is set to begin production in 2022, and the main character will be Oscar de la Vega. This is possibly a descendant of Don Diego de la Vega, the version of Zorro played by Anthony Hopkins in the first film. The reboot will use themes from the original, but these will be blended with digitalisation to appeal to today’s audiences.

 

The news about Zorro 2.0 is exciting and could help revitalise a franchise that could have been much bigger if it had been released during the internet age.