Zorro Reimagining with Female Lead in Development at NBC

You can’t keep a good Fox down. The masked avenger that helped kickstart a genre will return as CBS Television Studios has signed a first-look deal with Propagate, setting one of their first projects with the television network as a new interpretation of the iconic character Zorro. Deadline reports that the new version, simply titled Zorro for now, will be a modern reimagining of the character and his mythology. The series will focus on Z, described as “a female descendant of the warrior bloodline who will go to great lengths to protect the defenseless in her community.” The new series is in development for NBC.

The new version of Zorro (whose heroic name comes from the Spanish word for The Fox) hails from Magnum PI and Burn Notice scribe Alfredo Barrios Jr. Further details on the show haven’t been disclosed yet but it’s an easy call to make that it will take the basic concept of the original Zorro stories and infuse it with a modern sensibility. How the new character will take Zorro’s trademark outfit will be handled, not to mention his use of a sword and horse in the streets of 2019, remains to be seen. The subject matter will no doubt provide fertile ground for its creative team to explore political and social subtext with the character.

This isn’t the first time that the idea of a descendant of Zorro taking on the mantle has been used. The 1990 reboot of the character on “The Family Channel” (the original moniker of the now Freeform network) saw a character step into the shoes of the original Zorro after he died. Even the fan favorite movies The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro starring Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas followed a similar story path. Furthermore, an animated series titled Zorro: Generation Z premiered on Telemundo in 2006 with a similar premise (even taking place in 2015), though focusing on a male descendant of the original Don Diego de la Vega. Since the character has been in the public domain for many years, he’s been a favorite for companies eager to develop their own hero and mythology.

“We’re thrilled to take Propagate’s already fruitful relationship with CBS Television Studios to the next level,” Propagate co-CEO and chairman Ben Silverman said about the deal. “We look forward to identifying and developing more unique, compelling content to collaborate on for a variety of platforms.”

In addition to the new Zorro series, Propagate and CBS Television Studios are developing a drama series titled Home from Queen of the South‘s Jorge Reyes for NBC and an untitled series from Fear the Walking Dead‘s Melissa Scrivner-Love for CBS.

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