‘Scarface’ Loses Director Antoine Fuqua, Gains a Star in Diego Luna

Depending on your point of view, today’s good news / bad news situation might be a good news / good news type of thing — Antoine Fuqua has dropped out of the long-developing Scarface remake, and though the director’s chair is now vacant, the project does have a very talented actor to lead it: Diego Luna, who most recently co-starred in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

If you weren’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of a Fuqua-helmed Scarface, then it’s all positive news from Variety, which reports that the director was forced to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with The Equalizer 2. The sequel, which reunites Fuqua with frequent collaborator Denzel Washington, is set to hit theaters on September 14, 2018 — that doesn’t exactly leave much room, if any, for Fuqua to direct both projects. (And considering that his most recent effort was another remake-of-a-remake, maybe it’s for the best.)

Meanwhile, Universal has tapped Diego Luna to headline the Scarface remake, which currently has a script from Boardwalk Empire creator and Wolf of Wall Street scribe Terence Winter. (David Ayer and Straight Outta Compton’s Jonathan Herman are among those who previously provided drafts.) Like Brian De Palma’s 1983 remake of Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson’s 1932 film, the new iteration follows an ambitious immigrant who becomes a powerful drug kingpin and finds that lording over a criminal empire comes at great personal cost (as these things usually do).

The key difference between the De Palma version and this one is the setting, as the modern update takes place in Los Angeles and centers on a Mexican immigrant rather than a Cuban one.