Eli Roth Wants To Film Sci-Fi Blockbuster (w/ Bonus Gorefest)

The name Eli Roth has become synonymous with bloody and disgusting modern horror flicks – he burst onto the scene back in 2002 with the at-best mediocre Cabin Fever, and then unfortunately subjected us to not one but two Hostel films, those which I consider to be wastes of the film they were printed on.

However, as much as I dislike Roth as a filmmaker (he’s not quite at the level of Rob Zombie for me, but almost…), I will admit to loving his hilarious fake trailer called Thanksgiving that was part of the Grindhouse experience. On pure entertainment value alone, his was probably the best of the bunch.

Well, it appears that Roth liked it so much that he’s going to turn it into a low-budget full-length feature film, which he will film back-to-back with an at-present secret sci-fi blockbuster. He said this a while ago, but we haven’t heard anything new about it in quite a bit.

Firstly, the sci-fi film is unnamed at this point in time, since according to Roth he isn’t quite sure if the rights are completely his yet (a clue, perhaps, that it is based on an idea that already exists?). In an interview recently, here’s what he had to say about it:

“I’m almost done with my new script… I was actually almost done with it before ‘[Inglourious] Basterds,’ but I had to put it down, and that was actually a good thing I took time away from it, but I’m going to finish that up and start shooting this fall.”

“I don’t want to give away the title yet, because I have to make sure I own it 100%, but it’s going to be something that is really fun with lots of mass destruction,” he said. “I wanted to do something along the lines of ‘Transformers’ or ‘Cloverfield’ that was a little more science fiction-based, and with lots of chaos and mass destruction.”

“I don’t want to say what [the monster is] yet,” Roth added. “Once it gets set up, I will let everyone know. It is not aliens or robots or a virus – it’s a little more grounded. But when people hear it they are going to be like ‘That is going to be insane!’.”

Roth revealed that since Thanksgiving would undoubtedly be a lot smaller of a film, both in size and in budget (it would have to be for a studio to put up the money for it after the financial bomb of Grindhouse), that he would like to film the two of them back-to-back:

“The plan is this: I want to do a huge budget movie, but tack on three weeks to the end of it and shoot ‘Thanksgiving’,” he revealed. “I want to do an $80 million dollar movie, and then schedule three weeks at the end to quickly shoot a $5 million dollar movie.”

Finally, he said he is planning on shopping the two projects around at various studios in the hopes of acquiring $85 million for the two combined:

“[Thanksgiving will be] the sickest, bloodiest, most violent slasher movie… I want to make the highest body count slasher film I can.”

Roth’s Thanksgiving trailer within Grindhouse is one of a couple (the other being Machete – which Robert Rodriguez is planning on doing) that could work as a standalone, full-length feature. It has that Friday the 13th and Halloween vibe to it (which I’m sure Roth, as a horror film fanatic, was very much going for) that would appeal to a relatively wide audience, and if the fake trailer is anything to go by, the body count is sure to be high enough (as he mentions in the above interview that he’s aiming for) to garner cheers-a-plenty once those audiences get into the theatre.

As for his secret sci-fi blockbuster – I have to admit I’m intrigued. I never would have pegged Roth as ever doing a sci-fi film (although in saying that, his favorite film is John Carpenter’s sci-fi horror The Thing), let alone a big-budget blockbuster type one. I’m even more intrigued by the fact he mentioned the two names Transformers and Cloverfield as part of what’s aiming to achieve with it – although he specifically says it won’t be, “aliens, or robots…” that may just be some sort of cover up to throw us off the scent. Does the mentioning of those two movies mean we will see giant robots fighting with aliens, seen through the lens of handheld shaky cam?

I’d pay just to see how that looks on-screen, never mind anything like story or character development!

I’m sure once Roth feels comfortable and confident enough to reveal the name of this mysterious sci-fi film, that we can begin to speculate on just what it’ll be about. Maybe filming it right before going straight on to do the much lower budget Thanksgiving, with the creative juices of charting unfamiliar sci-fi territory flowing, it will work out for the best for both the projects.

Here’s hoping…

What are your thoughts on Roth’s plans to make a sci-fi film, a genre he hasn’t tried his hand at yet? Also, do you like the idea of a full-length feature film version of his Grindhouse fake trailer Thanksgiving?

Source: MTV Movies Blog