UNIVERSAL FILM WOULD DRAW ELEMENTS FROM BOTH PREVIOUS FILM VERSIONS
It looks like that recent Scarface cast reunion may have gotten Martin Bregman thinking about a new version of Scarface. Deadline's Mike Fleming reports tonight that he's heard that Universal Pictures has been meeting with writers to work out a new take on Scarface, to be produced by Bregman and Marc Shmuger, who recently started his own production company, Global Produce. (Shmuger was vice chairman at Universal in 2005, when he visited the set of Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia in Bulgaria. Shmuger was so impressed by what he was seeing there that he picked up the distribution rights to that film for Universal.)This new Scarface "is not intended to be a remake or a sequel," writes Fleming. "It will take the common elements of the first two films: an outsider, an immigrant, barges his way into the criminal establishment in pursuit of a twisted version of the American dream, becoming a kingpin through a campaign of ruthlessness and violent ambition. The studio is keeping the specifics of where the new Tony character comes from under wraps at the moment, but ethnicity and geography were important in the first two versions."