Bernal is perhaps best known for starring alongside Diego Luna in Alfonso Cuaron's 2001 drama Y tu mama tambien, but he has quite an extensive resume.  He played Che Guevera in The Motorcycle Diaries, starred in Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, worked with Pedro Almodovar on Bad Education, and was part of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's ensemble in Babel.  He and Luna will next be seen starring alongside Will Ferrell in the Spanish-language comedy Casa de mi Padre.

According to Variety, Bernal has is the frontrunner to play the title character in Zorro Reborn, a new take on the character from 20th Century Fox.  It's one of two seprate Zorro movies in development, as Sony Pictures is also cooking up a new story based on the novel Zorro by Isabel Allende. Sony was responsible for the character's last cinematic adventures, 1998's The Mask of Zorro and 2005's The Legend of Zorro, both directed by Martin Campbell.

Zorro Reborn will be a departure in that it's not set in Spanish-colonial California, but instead is a futuristic take on the character that will effectively reboot his elaborate superhero-style mythology.  The screenplay was written by Glenn Gers, Brian McGreevy, and Lee Shipman, but it does not yet have a director.  Mark Amin, Cami Winikoff and David Higgins are producing, and now that they have a recognizable actor to play the titular swordsman, one imagines they'll set about finding someone to actually direct Zorro Reborn.