Following the demise of his planned Audrey Hepburn biopic, Luca Guadagnino has now left the new take on Scarface too.
Luca Guadagnino is one of those filmmakers whose slate has looked pretty packed for some time now, so when it was announced that he would be tackling an adaptation of William Golding’s classic 1954 novel, Lord Of The Flies, it started to look like some projects were going to have to give way.
Around a month ago, the filmmaker’s planned Audrey Hepburn biopic that had Rooney Mara attached was announced as no longer happening. There doesn’t seem much chance of that coming back to life anytime soon either.
Now, it seems that Guadagnino’s take on Scarface, a project that he’s been attached to for several years, will be happening without him in the director’s chair. Guadagnino himself confirmed his exit, telling The Hindu (via Dark Horizons) that “I am not working on Scarface anymore”.
He didn’t elaborate on his reasons for leaving the project which was set to be a contemporary, LA-set take on the classic crime drama which has already been brought to the screen twice, once by Howard Hawks in 1932 and then by Brian DePalma in 1983. Those versions were set in Chicago and Miami, respectively.
We don’t really know what’s happening with the latest take on Scarface, although it does boast a script by the Coen Brothers and tax funding for the project is reportedly all in place, suggesting production was gearing up to begin back in 2021.
Of course, a lot has happened in the world since then, so we’ll just have to wait and see if and when a new director is announced.
Guadagnino joins David Ayer and Antoine Fuqua as another name who ‘might have been’, although when it comes to a modern reimagining of Scarface, he’s the filmmaker that is synonymous with the project and has been for quite some time now.
Guadagnino’s next film, Challengers, is due to release in 2024, as will Queer, the Daniel Craig-led period drama that has just completed production.
Beyond that, Guadagnino is said to be tackling an adaptation of Wartime Lies, a holocaust novel, not to mention the gender-swapped version of Lord Of The Flies. We’ll bring you more on any of these projects as we hear it.
