Remember back in 2019 when rumors came out that Quentin Tarantino was trying to create a Django Unchainedcinematic universe that involved a possible crossover with Django (Jamie Foxx) and the masked vigilante Zorro? What a film that would have been!
Turns out that film almost did happen.
Antonio Banderas, who played Zorro in 1998’s The Mask of Zorro and 2005’s The Legend of Zorro, confirmed to USA Today that Tarantino approached him to star in the crossover movie.
“[Tarantino] talked to me, I think on the Oscar night [in 2020] 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!”
Banderas explains his enthusiasm at the possibility of working with Tarantino, saying, “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.”
'The Mask of Zorro'Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing
Tarantino had approached comedian Jerrod Carmichael to write the script, hoping to create a film that felt something like a buddy-cop movie with a spaghetti western spin on it. The project had been lingering in Tarantino’s mind since Reginald Hudlin pitched the idea to him at dinner one night back in 2014.
The film would have taken place several years after the events of Tarantino’s 2012 film, Django Unchained. Django, now operating in the west, works as a bounty hunter, a line of work that has put a warrant on him. While unbothered and focused more on enjoying life with his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), Django’s journeys bring him into contact with the now-aged yet famed Don Diego de la Vega, better known as Zorro. The pair come to admire each other, joining forces to free the local Indigenous people from slavery.
Unfortunately, Carmichael confirmed in an interview with GQ that the Django/Zorro crossover film will not be happening. While he did not reveal the reasons for shelving the plans, Carmichael did reveal despite the screenplay being written, the project was perhaps too ambitious to get off the ground.
“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,” Carmichael said in the interview. “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 still think we wrote a $500-million film.”
It doesn’t look like Tarantino’s final unknown film will be his $500-million Django/Zorro film, but the fact that the screenplay exists somewhere out there is exciting to think about. Hopefully one day, we will be able to get our hands on it and read what could have been. If we ever find it, we will be sure to share it with you.
Let us know in the comments if you would like to see this Django/Zorro crossover!
Source: USA Today
