In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then, when you get the money, you get the power. Then, when you get the power, you get to helm ill-timed remakes of movies about bloodthirsty Latino stereotypes. This is the experience of David Ayer, whom Deadline reports is in talks to direct the latest iteration of Scarface for Universal. This is actually a weird circle-of-life moment for the project, which the studio has been trying to get off the ground for most of the past decade, having gone through numerous screenwriters and directors. (The most recent director being Antoine Fuqua, who left in January to focus on a sequel to his own ill-considered remake.) But in this case, we’ve been reporting on this film since 2011, when we first announced Universal had found a scribe to pen the screenplay of an undocumented immigrant who is basically the ideal scarecrow for nationalist xenophobia, a writer by the name of…David Ayer. Hakuna Matata.
Ironically, the only thing giving anyone any hope for this project is the fact that Universal gave the script over to several other writers following Ayer’s initial draft, and the version that will now purportedly be shot by Ayer was crafted by none other than the Coen brothers. So Ayer will be directing a rewrite of a script he originally penned, one that was obviously determined to be unsatisfactory, almost as though he’s recently been recognized for having filmed a script that wasn’t good enough. Diego Luna is attached to star, and the film is scheduled for release in August 2018.
Also, this seems as good a place as any to share this image we captured of Suicide Squad with the captions on, perfectly encapsulating Ayer’s vision: