First Machete, Now Eli Roth moves ahead with Thanksgiving

[Brian Damage]

The faux trailers from Grindhouse are gaining momentum as Robert Rodriguez mounts a full production of Machete, and now Eli Roth, who shot the fan-favorite trailer Thanksgiving, confirms that he has plans to make a full feature film as well.

"There is hope for Thanksgiving, because that one I retain the rights to, and that, I love it," Roth said in an exclusive interview earlier this month in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he was promoting Inglourious Basterds.

Thanksgiving mimicked the conventional holiday-themed slasher movies, with a killer stalking generic victims during the November holiday weekend. Now Roth has bold plans for an experimental horror franchise.

"Now I'm kind of thinking maybe I should make like 20 Thanksgivings in a row, just shoot them all and just release them out of order," Roth continued. "Like, do Thanksgiving 7, then Thanksgiving 4, then 5 and 6 in the theater. People'd be like, 'Why did 7 come out already?' It's like, 'Well, it doesn't matter. It's just a bunch of people getting chopped up anyways. Who cares?'"

A return to Roth's horror roots may have to wait for him to complete the PG-13 sci-fi Endangered Species. Roth feels Thanksgiving will be better for his taking a break from the genre.

"[I should] make a PG-13 movie so that I'm like, 'Aw, man, I wish I could kill more people,'" Roth said. "Then let Thanksgiving just be a bloodletting."

The R-rated trailer from Grindhouse runs only a few minutes (watch it below), but Roth already has the feature-length story conceived. "I had the whole story when I shot it," Roth said. "I shot scenes, but I had the whole movie figured out when I made that trailer."

Speaking of trailers, another Roth idea, Trailer Trash, is dead, he said. The concept was an entire film made up of trailers spoofing all different genres of films, but that would add up to a coherent story.

"There's a disagreement," Roth said. "This was going to be with the Weinstein Co., and here I am as one of the leads in their film, so I love those guys, and we're all friends. I say this with the utmost respect, but I had a disagreement on what the movie should be. At a certain point I go, 'If that's the movie they want to make, and they're the ones paying for it, then that's what they should make.' I don't want to sit here and be fighting about it all the time. After having the same discussions over and over and over and over and over and keep coming back to the same point, I just go, 'You know what? I'm no longer interested in this.'"

The same thing happened on Roth's fizzled adaptation of Stephen King's Cell. "You go through a long period of trying to get on the same page," Roth said. "The filmmakers don't want to fight with the studio, and the studio doesn't want to fight with the filmmakers. If you see that you both have very different visions, then at a certain point it's like, 'Well, I have this other idea that I just got that I'm 100 times more excited about anyways, so you kinda lost me. I'm now interested in that one.'"


http://scifiwire.com/2009/08/eli-rot...ahead-with.php