Say hello to my little remake.
Screenwriter David Ayer -- best known for penning Training Day, U-571 and the original The Fast and the Furious -- has been tapped to write a revitalized Scarface for Universal Studios, according to Deadline. As with Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone’s 1983 genre mashup, Ayer’s Scarface will put a modern spin on a classic gangster story that first hit the silver screen in 1932. Both films follow an ambitious but psychopathic petty crook who ruthlessly climbs the ladder of his chosen criminal syndicate, only to tumble when he succumbs to his dangerous vices.
Aren’t you just dying to find out who’ll be brazen enough to step into Al Pacino’s massive, lunatic shoes to play a contemporary version of the cocaine-snorting, machine-gun-firing Tony Montana? It sounds like a suicide mission to me, but Ayer is welcoming the challenge with open arms.
“I sought it out; I went after it hard. I see it as the story of the American dream, with a character whose moral compass points in a different direction. That puts it right in my wheelhouse,” Ayer tells Deadline. “I studied both the original Ben Hecht-Howard Hawks movie and the De Palma-Pacino version and found some universal themes. I’m still under the hood figuring out the wiring that will translate, but … there are enough opportunities in the real world today that provide an opportunity to do this right. If it was just an attempt to remake the 1983 film, that would never work.”
That’s encouraging to hear. And in no way does Scarface need to be a shot-for-shot remake of either version for it to succeed. While Ayer has worked the “police” side of the equation in films like Training Day and S.W.A.T., you can see signs of Montana in Denzel Washington’s dirty cop, so he might be the right guy for this job.
