You may know Ricardo De Montreuil best as the director of “The Raven,” not the James McTeigue-helmed Edgar Allen Poe actioner starring John Cusack, but rather the short film about a man named Chris Black who deals with the perils of having mysterious powers against the backdrop of a futuristic Los Angeles (watch it below). Well it looks as if Montreuil, who popped up on many in Hollywood’s radar with that short, could be taking a trip to the future once again.
We were shocked back in February when it was reported that free spirited actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who’s starred in some of the most memorable independent features of the past decade or so from Alfonso Cuaron’s “Y Tu Mama Tambien” to Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education,” would be taking the role of the legendary Zorro. Unlike Antonio Banderas in “The Mask of Zorro,” Bernal’s Zorro is hellbent on leaving his mark on a post-apocalyptic world of the future, with a screenplay by writers Glenn Gers and “Harker” scribes Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy. Montreuil is reportedly set to direct that actor in a screen test for 20th Century Fox, but Variety reports there’s no deal in place for him to direct the feature just yet.
It makes sense, as Montreuil would make a good match for the film’s subject material based on his past work, but since it looks as if this is aiming to be a tentpole picture for Fox, we’d highly doubt they’d let an untested director like Montreuil take the reigns of a potentially giant film like this. Then again, this is the same studio who gave Rupert Wyatt “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” despite boasting a strikingly similar resume, with two independent features and a few shorts under his belt.
Montreuil has a feature film version of “The Raven” set up at Universal, with Mark Wahlberg serving as producer and a script by Justin Marks, so perhaps it’s more likely he would direct the big budget version of his own film before tackling Zorro. Then again, stranger things have happened in Hollywood, like a movie about a post-apocalyptic Zorro battling a tyrant and his mercenaries.
