Luca Guadagnino will direct a Coen… | Little White Lies

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Luca Guadagni­no will direct a Coen broth­ers-writ­ten remake of Scarface

14 May 2020

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two smiling adults, a man and a woman, conversing in a warm, intimate setting.
Two smiling adults, a man and a woman, conversing in a warm, intimate setting.
Say hel­lo to the esteemed film­mak­er’s lit­tle friend!

Always nice to get some­thing new to look for­ward to in these dire days of quar­an­tine, though whether news of anoth­er film direct­ed by Luca Guadagni­no” qual­i­fies as such varies high­ly from view­er to view­er. Wher­ev­er you may stand on his body of work, the polar­iz­ing film­mak­er broke the news today that he’s accept­ed his next major gig, and it’s sure to fur­ther widen the chasm between his admir­ers and detractors.

Guadagni­no will take a whack at direct­ing Universal’s long-ges­tat­ing remake of gang­ster clas­sic Scar­face, anoth­er spin on a well-loved genre pic­ture to fol­low his dras­tic rework of Sus­piria from 2018. This new project will have some­thing his pre­vi­ous one did not, how­ev­er, in the Coen broth­ers, who have been report­ed by Vari­ety as the pens behind the script.

He’ll resus­ci­tate an intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty real­ized first in 1932 by Howard Hawks as the sto­ry of hot-tem­pered Mafioso Tony Camonte, and more famous­ly revived in 1983 by Bri­an De Pal­ma as the coke-fueled rise and fall of Al Paci­nos loose can­non king­pin Tony Mon­tana. An indeli­ble influ­ence on crime cin­e­ma and hip-hop cul­ture, it casts a long shad­ow that Guadagni­no will sure­ly shake off with a free reinterpretation.

Just this past Feb­ru­ary, for­mer­ly attached lead­ing man Diego Luna announced that he had part­ed ways with the pro­duc­tion, leav­ing the spot wide open for a new tal­ent. The Vari­ety item spec­i­fies that the Coens’ treat­ment of the script casts Mon­tana (or what­ev­er his name might be this time around) as a Mex­i­can immi­grant adrift in Los Ange­les, though Guadagnino’s lib­er­ty-tak­ing spir­it could place any­one in the role.

His work on Sus­piria sug­gests that his impulse is to move as far from his pre­de­ces­sor as pos­si­ble, which means what view­ers should expect from his Scar­face is anyone’s guess. It’ll be a while until we see hide or hair of this one, with even pre-pro­duc­tion prepa­ra­tions slowed by the pan­dem­ic, but it’ll be a nice light on the hori­zon for any­one who doesn’t see this as a yeesh-wor­thy attack on art.

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