David Ayer to pen updated SCARFACE version

In September we told you about a new version of Scarface that Universal was developing. Deadline has now reported that Training Day scribe David Ayer is set to write the script based on the 1983 Brian De Palma cultural phenomenon. A blu-ray (read my review here) recently hit shelves of the film that starred Al Pacino as Cuban gangster Tony Montana. Writers have been meeting with the studio to craft a script to be produced by Marc Shmuger and Martin Bregman (who also produced the '83 film).

Here is what Ayer had to say about remaking a classic:

“This is a fantasy for me, I can still remember when I saw the film at 13 and it blew my mind,” he said. “I sought it out; I went after it hard. I see it as the story of the American dream, with a character whose moral compass points in a different direction. That puts it right in my wheelhouse. I studied both the original Ben Hecht-Howard Hawks movie and the DePalma-Pacino version and found some universal themes. I’m still under the hood figuring out the wiring that will translate, but both films had a specificity of place, there was unapologetic violence, and a main character who socially scared the shit out of people, but who had his own moral code. Each was faithful to the underworld of its time. There are enough opportunities in the real world today that provide an opportunity to do this right. If it was just an attempt to remake the 1983 film, that would never work.”

Here is what we reported on this story earlier:

The project is not plannned as a remake or a sequel. "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. In the 1932 Scarface, an Italian (Paul Muni) took over Chicago, and in the Brian De Palma-directed remake, a Cuban cornered the cocaine trade in 1980s Miami, only to be consumed by it. Ann Dvorak, George Raft and Boris Karloff starred in the original and Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer and Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio starred in the remake."

I loved the 1983 film and am interested in seeing this new version. Ayer is a great writer and director and will be a great choice to write the script. I hope that he ends up directing it as well. What are your thoughts?