‘Point Break’ remake: Edgar Ramirez to replace Gerard Butler

Edgar Ramirez is paddling out to “Point Break,” Alcon Entertainment’s reboot of the 1991 surf-crime flick about a hot-shot FBI agent who infiltrates a group of thrill-seeking bank robbers, the film’s producers announced Wednesday.

Ramirez, the Emmy-nominated star of the Carlos the Jackal biopic “Carlos,” is in talks to replace Gerard Butler as the Zen-spouting ringleader Bodhi in “Point Break.” Butler recently departed the project because of creative differences and a scheduling conflict.

“We consider Edgar one of the finest actors in the world today, and we are thrilled he will be creating a fresh new take on the iconic character of Bodhi,” Alcon chiefs Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson said in a statement.

The Venezuelan actor is to star opposite Luke Bracey (“G.I. Joe: Retaliation”), who is playing the ambitious young FBI agent Johnny Utah. Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves played Bodhi and Utah in the original movie, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

That film took place in the Southern California surf scene, but the remake is set in the broader world of international extreme sports. Ericson Core, a cinematographer on “The Fast and the Furious” and “Daredevil,” is directing the new film, which is set to shoot in June.

Ramirez, 37, is a diplomat’s son who once dreamed of being the U.N. secretary-general. He rose to fame on the popular Venezuelan telenovela “Cosita Rica.” Besides his role as an international terrorist in Olivier Assayas’ miniseries “Carlos,” his credits include “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Ramirez’s upcoming films include the biopic “The Liberator,” in which he plays Simon Bolivar, and the horror movie “Deliver Us From Evil,” in which he plays a renegade priest.