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“It’s not easy to come up with a script and story that is as good as the first one,” said director Martin Campbell during the LA premiere of his sequel The Legend of Zorro. Of the first film, he said of the lead characters Alejandro/Zorro and Elena, “We left them at the end married with a child; I mean, where the hell do you go from there?”

The Mask of Zorro opened to $22.5 million back in 1998. It went on to earn $94 million in the US and a grand total of $250 million worldwide. As explained by Campbell, everything was neatly concluded and all tied up in the first film, thus preventing the need for a sequel.

Development for a sequel (then titled Zorro Unmasked) seemed to begin in 2000, with the original writers Ted Russo and Terry Elliot revealing in an interview with MJ Simpson that the film is likely to include pirates, the California Gold Rush, someone from Alejandro’s past, an old flame of Elena’s, as well as Elena dressed as Zorro. At the time, Russo said of the story, “I don't have much hope for this project. We’re writing a version of a story that was approved, but I'm not sure it’s the best version of the story possible.”

While their script was not used, some of their contributions remained, netting both Russo and Elliot a story credit on the sequel. The ones writing the screenplay were Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. They had previously worked together on the TV series Alias and Michael Bay’s The Island. Their script involved Zorro separating from Elena and later getting divorced, only to fall in love with her all over again.

Speaking to Empire Magazine, lead star Antonio Banderas said, “This time, because Zorro is already established, we had to think: what is the one thing that can shake up a man’s life? Elena leaves me. So all these elements come in, like jealousy and desperation. He goes through a crisis, he starts drinking again, he’s got problems with his son, the whole family is totally disrupted.”

The story is set ten years after The Mask of Zorro, where we find Alejandro (Antonio Banderas) and Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) now married and with a son, Joaquin (Adrián Alonso). Much to Elena’s annoyance, Alejandro feels that Zorro is still needed to protect the people and future of California, so he refuses to give up the mask. Unable to accept that he is still risking his life, Elena decides to separate from him. She is then forced by a pair of government operatives to work for them, at which point she gets a divorce so that she can use her relationship with Count Armand (Rufus Sewell) to investigate him. This sends Alejandro into a drunken rage. However, donning the mask as Zorro and doing a little digging, he finds out that Armand intends to destroy the United States… by distributing nitroglycerine… via soap.

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