NBC has given the green light to an updated take on the masked vigilante character Zorro, but this time with a woman in the lead as the hero.
The story is set to be written by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and writer-director Rebecca Rodriguez. It will feature Sola Dominguez, a female social justice warrior who takes on the masked personae of Zorro to face local gangsters who threaten her life after she exposes them, according to Deadline.
The film will be produced by Rodriguez and Modern Family star Sofia Vergara’s LatinWe production group in cooperation with Universal TV.
The new spin on Zorro joins a long list of shows to dump male leads for gender swapped female heroes. A recent example was the box office bomb Ghostbusters, which starred an all-female cast including Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones.
But there have been many others, including Ocean’s 8, an all-female Las Vegas heist film which is a remake of Ocean’s 11. There was a remake of the Michael Caine comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which was re-titled The Hustler and starred Rebel Wilson. And then there was the Taraji P. Henson film, What Men Want, which is a remake of the Mel Gibson film, What Women Want.
There are also similar gender-swapping films in the planning stages, including a female Thor currently set to star Natalie Portman, who is finally coming back to the Marvel movie scene after refusing to reprise her Jane Foster role in the past few Thor films. Disney has also been looking to re-boot the 1991 film, The Rocketeer, but starring a black female lead instead of the white male of the original movie and the comic book upon which it was based. Also there are plans for a remake of 1984’s Splash, as well, but instead of a man meeting a mermaid, the film is to feature a woman meeting a merman.
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