With superheroes having dominated popular culture for so long, it’s weird when a costumed hero pops up that we haven’t seen a while. Case in point: Zorro, a character whose legacy is so important to modern crimefighters that “seeing a Zorro movie” is an established part of Batman’s origin story, but one who hasn’t had a big movie or TV show in a very long time. Well, NBC is looking to finally change that, with the network developing a “contemporary take” on Zorro with Robert Rodriguez, Rebecca Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, and production companies LatinWe, Propagate, CBS Studios, and Universal TV (so there are lots of names on this thing).
The two Rodriguez siblings will write, with Rebeca Rodriguez directing, and in addition to being a contemporary take it will also be gender-swapped. This all comes from Deadline, which says the new Zorro will be a woman named Sola Dominguez, an “underground artist who fights for social justice as a contemporary version of the mythical Zorro.” Now, part of Zorro’s whole shtick is wearing a cape and slicing a “Z” into stuff with a sword, which might be a little harder to sell in a modern setting, but this is where the cleverness of the new Zorro being an “underground artist” comes in: Who needs a sword when you can do some kind of Banksy shit, putting a “Z” on a piece of brutal social commentary with spray paint? That wouldn’t be as cool as a sword, but it would certainly be… contemporary.