After spending years in development hell, the long-awaited Scarface remake seems to have finally found its footing. The project has found its new Tony Montana in Rogue One star Diego Luna, and the Coen Brothers have already signed on to work on the screenplay. Now, all we need is a director to bring the entire thing home. As it turns out, the highly anticipated remake seems to have found two stellar choices in the form of David Mackenzie and Peter Berg, and either of these two potential picks has us endlessly excited for what the Scarface update has in store for the iconic gangster tale.
A recent report from THR confirms that the Scarface remake has leveled its sights on two talented filmmakers to helm the story. After a lengthy development process, it appears that the project has finally narrowed its search to Hell Or High Water's David Mackenzie, and Patriots Day's Peter Berg as the two frontrunners. Try to contain your excitement; this is happening, people.
It's hard to accurately discern which of these filmmakers would make the better choice for the Scarface remake. On the one hand, David Mackenzie's work on Hell Or High Water pretty much definitively proves that the guy knows how to helm a beautifully dark crime story with strong thematic ties to economic despair. By contrast, Peter Berg (in many ways a student of Michael Mann's style of gritty filmmaking) has become one of Hollywood's go-to guys for hard-hitting action in recent years.
They're both solid choice, and either one of them would make a perfect replacement for Antoine Fuqua -- who departed the project after a series of scheduling conflicts interfered with his ability to work on the Scarface remake. This project has attracted nothing less than A-list talent, so we remain incredibly optimistic about its potential.
Based on what we know about the Scarface remake, it sounds like the film will try to take the classic tale from the 1980s and give it a much more contemporary feel. Rather than focus on a Cuban immigrant building a criminal empire in Miami during the 1980s, the film will center on a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles who follows a similar path in the modern era. The Scarface update is expected to follow the basic framework of Brian De Palma's original 1983 crime classic, so fans should prepare themselves to get very, very excited for what's on the horizon.
The Scarface remake is currently slated to shoot, snort, and blast its way into theaters next summer on August 10, 2018.
