Reports surfaced in 2019 that Quentin Tarantino was going to continue the “Django Unchained” universe on the big screen by adapting his own crossover comic book “Django/Zorro,” which finds the freed slave (played by Jamie Foxx in the film) teaming up with the masked vigilante. Tarantino courted comedian Jerrod Carmichael to write the script, and he even went to Antonio Banderas to get him to reprise the Zorro character he played in 1998’s “The Mask of Zorro” and 2005’s “The Legend of Zorro.”
Banderas recently confirmed to USA Today that Tarantino approached him to star in the crossover movie. “He 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!’ Because Quentin just has that nature to do those type 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.”
“We’ve never worked together, but it would be great because of him, because of Jamie Foxx and because of (playing) Zorro again when he’s a little bit older,” Banderas added. “It would be fantastic and funny and crazy.”
Unfortunately, the project appears to be a casualty of the pandemic. Carmichael recently confirmed to GQ magazine that “Django/Zorro” is no longer happening. A specific reason for the project’s death was not given, although Carmichael made it seem that perhaps it was 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,” Carmichael said. “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 still think we wrote a $500 million film.”
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Tarantino has yet to announce a feature directorial follow-up to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The filmmaker still plans to retire from moviemaking after his 10th feature, which happens to be his next movie.
