It was announced today that MacArthur Genius Award-winner Alex Rivera has signed on to write and direct the reboot Zorro 2.0, which will be produced by Mark Amin’s Sobini Films. Rivera has written a new draft for a scheduled start in 2022. The official synopsis reads, "When his mother is attacked by a secret government unit, Oscar de la Vega, a young, undocumented hacker known as 'z0rr0,' fights back and discovers a high-tech conspiracy that threatens not only his family, but the world."

Alex Rivera recently won the MacArthur Genius award for 2021 and is also a Sundance Fellow, and was the Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. For the past twenty years, he has been writing and directing award-winning, critically acclaimed, visionary Latino films. Rivera’s first feature, Sleep Dealer, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border, won awards at both the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival and also had a commercial theatrical release around the world.

Speaking on Latino history, Rivera says, "All the way through, if you look at any chapter in Latino history, and as I would define it, it starts with the conquest when the Spanish met Native Americans and started to kill each other and enslave each other and make babies together and create a whole new race. Is there anything More Shakespearian? More dramatic? No."

Rivera’s second feature, The Infiltrators, a hybrid doc/scripted film that tells a true story about an immigrant detention center, won the Next: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators is currently being developed by Blumhouse Television as a scripted series. “I’ve always been interested in films that address real-world issues through genre. This project is an opportunity to connect Zorro—the original masked avenger—to today’s border wars, a conflict in which immigrant families are pitted against regimes of hi-tech surveillance and government control. Zorro 2.0 will be visually elevated, socially grounded, sci-fi cinema, and I’m thrilled to be working with Sobini to get this vision on the screen,” said Rivera.

Sobini Films Mark Amin, Cami Winikoff, and Tyler Boehm will produce. John Gertz of Zorro Productions International and Michael Helfant of Amasia Entertainment will serve as Executive Producers. Sobini’s Amin most recently produced and directed the Civil War drama Emperor, starring Dayo Okeniyi, Kat Graham, Bruce Dern, James Cromwell and Mykelti Williamson. He also produced the Universal release JT LeRoy starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern, Sony Pictures Classics’ Miles Ahead starring Don Cheadle and Ewan McGregor, and IFC’s Mary Shelley starring Elle Fanning. In addition to his work at Sobini, Amin served as Vice Chairman of Lionsgate Entertainment and prior to that founded Trimark Holdings, Inc. and served as the company’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until the company merged with Lionsgate.

“Alex’s vision grounds Zorro in today’s real-world issues while delivering on the fun of a superhero action movie and the humor and charm of the classic Zorro movies,” said Amin. “He is the perfect filmmaker to update Zorro for today’s audience.”