Spain's Almodovar reunites with Banderas for new film

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has cast "Zorro" star Antonio Banderas in his next film about a vengeful plastic surgeon, two decades after they last worked together, El Pais said Wednesday.

Spanish actor Banderas, familiar for Hollywood films such as "Evita" and "Assassins", and also his marriage to the American actress Melanie Griffith, first worked with Almodovar in 1982 when he was 22 years old.

They collaborated together on a handful more films, including "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and, in their last outing together 21 years ago, "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!".

It "will be close to a horror film," Almodovar said about his new production, provisionally titled "The Skin I Live In", "which was something I really wanted to do as I had never made one, but I will not respect any rules of the genre."

The Spanish director will adapt Frenchman Thierry Jonquet's 1999 novel "Tarantula", a dark tale involving grisly applications of plastic surgery as a father takes revenge against the man who raped his daughter.

Almodovar's most frequent muse has been Penelope Cruz, the leading lady in his last two films "Volver" and "Broken Embraces", but the Spanish actress is not on the cast list this time.

"The more I developed the story, the less I saw her in the role, but it's not important at all, I see her again in many more roles," the director said, quoted in the Spanish daily.

The director had to rewrite the screenplay nine times, "and if I can finally shoot it, it's because I have been able to solve the huge problems I had with the adaptation. I am stubborn and I could not abandon this story."

No dates have been set for shooting, which will last 10 weeks.