All eyes are on Quentin Tarantino’s next movie because the Pulp Fiction director claims it’s going to be his last and final film. Back in 2019, rumours were making their rounds that director Quentin Tarantino was making moves to create a Django Unchained cinematic universe that spelt the possibility of a crossover film with Django (Jamie Foxx) and the legendary masked vigilante Zorro (Antonio Banderas).
And sadly, it almost happened.
It Almost Happened
This project had been living in Quentin Tarantino’s mind ever since 2014 when Reginald Hudlin pitched the seemingly random idea to him over dinner. And in the magnificent way of the iconic director and creator, the cogs of his brain started to turn and create this idea.
Antonio Banderas, who played Zorro in 1998 The Mask of Zorro, as well as 2005 The Legend of Zorro, confirmed to USA Today in an interview that Quentin Tarantino had approached him to star in the abandoned crossover movie.
In the interview, Banderas shared, “[Tarantino] talked to me, I think on the Oscar night [in 2010] when I was nominated for Pain and Glory. We saw each other at one of those parties. He just came up to me and I was like, ‘In your hands? Yeah, man!’”
When asked about his enthusiasm about possibly working with Tarantino once again, Banderas explained, “Because Quentin just has that nature to do those types of movies and give them quality. Even if they are based on those types of B-movies of the ‘60s and ‘70s, he can take that material and do something really interesting.”
Tarantino had even found a writer for the script in Jerrod Carmichael, having hoped to create a film that felt somewhat like a buddy-cop movie with a spaghetti western spin on it, one of his favourite genres.
The Abandoned Project
The screenplay had been written by Carmichael and still exists. The movie would have been set several years after the events of Tarantino’s 2012 Django Unchained where the titular character would now be operating in the West as a bounty hunter.
Despite the warrant on him for his actions, the story was said to show him unbothered, trying to enjoy his life with his wife, Broomhilda. Of course, his journey would eventually bring him into contact with the now-aged yet famed Don Diego de la Vega, better known to locals as the legendary Zorro. Bringing in that ‘buddy-cop’ element, the pair grow to admire and respect each other, joining forces to free the local indigenous people from their slavers.
However, Carmichael confirmed in an interview with Gentlemen’s Quarterly that the crossover was a doomed project and will not happen, although didn’t share the exact reason for the project being shelved. “Quentin’s a lunatic who I love, and I’m happy that I got to spend the time. We saw exploitation flicks at the New Beverly, he read me scenes that never made it to his movies, that he had typed out, in his kitchen after making fresh-squeezed lemonade for me. It was really special. It’s actually an incredible, incredible script that came in from that Django/Zorro that I would love for Sony to figure out, but I realize the impossibility of it. But I think we wrote a $500-million film.”
Hopefully one day there will be a production studio willing (and brave enough) to pick up the legend’s work, but until then we can just hope that someone will someday get hold of the screenplay so that we can by some means bear witness to the excellent crossover that could have been, but never was.
Hell yes, listen, I don’t like the old westerns, that’s my father’s generation & all we could afford to watch in 80’s as Sky was too expensive & you didn’t exactly get a lot of good films on regular TV like BBC1,BBC2 ITV, Channel 4. So, all I watched as young kid was old Westerns that y father loves, that includes from very early days 1940’s to 70’s but I love Modern day Westerns such as Eastwoods Unforgiven, A Kevin Costner one but Django, it blew me away, I freaken love it, I think it’s Christoff Walt’s Character, very talented actor who played A Nazi Officer in Inglorious Bastards, him & Tarantino are Magic in a bottle, then the Hateful Eight, just 1000/10 lol, perfection, I don’t like The Zorro movies now, I did when released as closest thing to bloody Superhero we got, like Batman, a caped crusader but if Quentin Tarantino was doing it, everyone from my fathers generation to my Nieces Generation would go & see it in Cinema’s and if it would cost too much either, Warner Discovery could do it or turn it into a sort of 12 part Limited series to air on a streaming service, just anything but HBO Max as we don’t get it here in UK, which I find disgusting & Warners wonders why they ain’t making a ton of money compared to Disney, well it’s because we have a Disney+ app on our TV’s in UK, we don’t have HBO but back to movie,I’d pay to go see it, more than once, Iv just recently bought nearly all of Tarantino’s movie posters on canvas for m living room when it’s finally finished just missing Inglorious Bastards, so I’m huge Tarantino fan.