Top Gun: Maverick actor Danny Ramirez is to star and produce in a new Scarface, billed as a modernised adaptation of the original novel. A new Scarface movie has been talked about by assorted filmmakers for a number of years now, but a new take on the gangster saga could finally emerge thanks to actor ... Scarface | Danny Ramirez to star and produce in new gangster movie
Top Gun: Maverick actor Danny Ramirez is to star and produce in a new Scarface, billed as a modernised adaptation of the original novel.
A new Scarface movie has been talked about by assorted filmmakers for a number of years now, but a new take on the gangster saga could finally emerge thanks to actor Danny Ramirez. The Top Gun: Maverick star and his producer partner Tom Culliver plan to make a new Scarface via their production company, Pinstripes, with Ramirez appearing in the lead.
The pair have said that it’ll adapt the original 1930 novel rather than draw directly from Howard Hawks’ 1932 Scarface movie or its 1983 remake, directed by Brian De Palma.
“We’re independently developing it,” Culliver told Deadline. “We have some development financing in place. Obviously, there’s the Pacino legacy of it from the 80s and then the original 1932 movie, but I think it’s ripe for modernising, and to have someone like Danny in the lead is really exciting.”
As Deadline notes, Universal Pictures released the 1983 Scarface, and the studio has been behind the stalled efforts to make its own reboot. The novel, written by Armitage Trail, is in the public domain, however, meaning there’s a small chance we could end up with two new Scarface movies over the next couple of years – assuming they both happen.
In 2020 came word that Luca Guadagnino was attached to direct a Scarface film written by the Coen brothers. Three years later, Guadagnino said that he wasn’t working on the movie anymore; it seems that production had been planned for 2021 but the chaos of the pandemic saw it delayed.
Before that, there was a version of Scarface written by Training Day and End Of Watch's David Ayer. In development through much of the 2010s, directors attached included David Yates, Pablo Larain and Antoine Fuqua. It too eventually fell apart, largely because Ayer and Universal couldn’t agree over the tone.
“It wasn’t too violent,” Ayer said of his script in 2023. “I created this rich, soulful journey through the drug trade, and kind of what it is. The studio wanted something more… fun.”
With Universal rather quite on its plans to make a Scarface film, it could be Ramirez and Culliver’s independent project that emerges first. The pair are currently promoting their first film from their production company, Dead Man’s Wire – a crime drama directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Bill Skarsgard, Colman Domingo and even Scarface himself, Al Pacino.
Of adapting Scarface, Ramirez said, “Scarface, to us, is the one that it’s been a dream role to play, but also to develop it in a way that I understand it. I think in 2025, it’s more relevant now than ever. So that’s where we’re excited to take this on.”
More as we get it.
