Machete goes solo?

The SXSW festival is underway, and Austinite maverick Robert Rodriguez is giving lucky attendees a healthy injection of GRINDHOUSE goodies (the rest of us chumps have to wait til the flick hits next month).

A nice meaty scoop among Rodriguez’s Q&A responses is that he’s already planning a straight-to-DVD spinoff featuring MACHETE, one of the faux trailers sandwiched between the two GRINDHOUSE flicks. The trailer stars RR collaborator and lovable thug Danny Trejo as an assassin and ladies man (yes, Danny Trejo) who wears a leather trenchcoat that holds about a hundred machetes, and drives a massive street hog motorcycle with a chaingun mounted on the front.

This doesn’t come as that much of a shock — Rodriguez and Tarantino have been remarkably enthusiastic about taking the GRINDHOUSE theme in different directions, but only one of the pair probably has the focus to follow through, so we might get a MACHETE movie after all. Hell, Rodriguez probably shot it already.

Rodriguez also announced the winners of the “Make Your Own GRINDHOUSE Trailer” contest, and while my personal favorite CONG OF THE DEAD didn’t place, it’s hard to argue with HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN.