Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino is to take on the long-gestating new version of classic gangster film Scarface.
According to Variety, Guadagnino is the latest director installed on a project that goes back to at least 2011. There are two previous versions: the 1932 original starring Paul Muni and directed by Howard Hawks, and the 1983 reworking with Al Pacino and directed by Brian De Palma.
The new production has a choppy history. Martin Bregman, who produced the De Palma film, was named as a producer, with Harry Potter’s David Yates lined up to direct a script by David Ayer. In 2014 it was reported that Pablo Larrain, the Chilean director of No, The Club and Jackie, was set to take over directing duties, with a script from Homicide: Life on the Street’s Paul Attanasio that focused on “a Mexican hustler in Los Angeles”. Subsequent reports suggested that Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) had at one point been set to direct, and after Fuqua left the project, a script by the Coen brothers was about to be filmed with Diego Luna in the lead role.
The Variety report says Guadagnino will be working from the Coens’ script, with The Batman’s Dylan Clark on board as producer. (Bregman died in 2018.)
Guadagnino was Oscar-nominated for best picture for Call Me By Your Name, the Italian-set romance starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, and has since completed a remake of the Dario Argento horror film Suspiria, with Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton.
