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'Hook' Star Dante Basco Developing Prequel on His Character Rufio?!

by Ethan Anderton
May 21, 2012
Source: Crave Online

Since the Steven Spielberg adventure Hook was already a sequel to the classic tale of Peter Pan, you might expect that a return to Neverland over 20 years later with Robin Williams and maybe even Dustin Hoffman reprising their roles would be in the cards. Instead, Crave Online has word from actor Dante Basco, who played the lewd, crude, rude, bag of pre-chewed food dude, Rufio, is in the middle of developing a prequel that follows that very character. Basco, who is now 36-years old, will not be reprising his role, but as a producer he's already locked down Rpin Suwannath, who was once rebooting Zorro, lined up to direct.

Basco told Crave briefly:

"Actually there’s a film in development, the Rufio film, where a hotshot group of kids from the East Coast graduated and they wrote this whole script, the prequel to Hook and it’s the Rufio story. We have it right now with a director, Rpin Suwannath who’s doing the new Zorro for Fox. He has the script and he’s attached to the film and I’m attached to produce so that’s actually in development right now which’ll be cool, a Rufio for a whole new generation.

The storyline is crazy actually. These guys have a whole storyline of how he gets the Mohawk. The whole story’s crazy. These guys came with the script, I’m like, “You guys wrote this?” Not only did they write this, they did the musical in their college. They were going to go off Broadway with it and then they lost their insurance and they came to Hollywood. If anyone saw their play it’s that, but the newer version is pretty intense. They added more action. I never saw the play but I think they added more backstory to Rufio, like how he became Rufio which I was impressed by. It’s in development "

Suwannath is a special effects previsualization specialist who has worked on X-Men, The Matrix, Superman Returns and more, and this will be his directorial debut, should a studio pick up the film as Basco pitches it around town. He was once expected to direct Zorro Reborn, but he's actually be replaced by Ricardo de Montreuil. There's no telling if he's got the chops to actually bring this character to life again and make a splash as a feature director though.

Honestly, this idea sounds pretty cool, especially as someone who pretended to be Rufio all the time as a kid (parents would let me get the mohawk, but I could fly, and fight and crow like a boss). I like that Basco (who has been busy doing a lot of voicework in cartoons like "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and "American Dragon: Jake Long") has gotten involved with the project, and if the story is good enough, I wonder if Steven Spielberg might be able to help him out a little bit. Hook still stands as one of my childhood favorites, even with its flaws and Spielberg's disappointment in the final product.Anyone interested?

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