Eli Roth might direct David O. Russell’s horror screenplay?

Last Updated on July 22, 2021

Here’s an interesting horror pairing: Eli Roth and David O. Russell. Roth’s resume needn’t be copied and pasted here by me, but Russell is not someone we associate with the genre. The writer-director is best known for films like THREE KINGS, THE FIGHTER and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, the latter two of which netted him Oscar nominations. And he’ll soon be in the awards conversation again with the AMERICAN HUSTLE, which stars Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper. So what’s bringing these two together?

During a director’s roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter (via ScreenCrush), Russell talks about the hard days following I HEART HUCKABEES, which was a box office bomb. It was also notable time for the man because Russell’s maniacal screaming matches with Lily Tomlin went public (relive that awesomeness HERE), causing him some serious PR damage. The director apparently had to write just to eat, and one of his scripts was a horror number that Roth got his hands on. Here’s his quote:

I wrote a couple of things that someone might make, Eli Roth may actually do one, I wrote a horror a few years ago…It’ll be coupled with Eli Roth, that’s exciting to me. Cause I had to write to support myself. So I wrote a horror for producer Colleen Camp a horror film that I thought was interesting. And Eli thinks its interesting, I think he’s going to make it more interesting…I don’t wanna say anything more, I’ll let Eli talk about it.

Damnit, now I’m intrigued. Of course, Eli currently has his plate full with the second season of “Hemlock Grove” and a sequel to THE GREEN INFERNO (not to mention half a dozen other projects in various stages of development), so who knows when – or if – he’ll get around to this. But I sure would love to know more about it, wouldn’t you?