Contemporary Zorro Drama Remake With Female Lead In The Works At NBC

NBC is developing Zorro, a contemporary take on the classic masked vigilante character with a gender swap, Deadline reports. The creative team includes filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, writer-director Rebecca Rodriguez, actress Sofia Vergara, and her production company LatinWe, along with Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens’ Propagate.

Vergara and Silverman are frequent collaborators, having teamed to produce together several projects over the past decade, including the ABC drama series Killer Women.

Robert Rodriguez’s next film will be hitting Netflix next month which is a sort of spin-off from his Lavagirl and Sharkboy movies called We Can Be Heroes. You can check out the trailer here.

The new Zorro will be co-written by the brother and sister duo of Robert and Rebecca Rodriguez and to be directed by Rebecca. The story centers on Sola Dominguez, an underground artist who fights for social justice as a contemporary version of Zorro, who will be a female descendant as she fulfills her duty to “protect the defenseless in her community.”

A similar premise was made for TV in Canada in 2000 called Queen of Swords that ran for a single season before being canceled.

At one time, Robert Rodriguez was attached to direct The Mask of Zorro and cast Antonio Banderas as the title role before leaving the feature project. He recently directed an episode of Disney+’s The Mandalorian. This is Zorro’s first live-action TV show in 27 years, although he’s been featured in a few animated programs since then.