While pimping the shite outta HOSTEL: PART II, director Eli Roth ran out of things to blab about regarding the sequel, and started dropping lines about his upcoming project, the adaptation of Stephen King’s CELL. King’s story about cell phone pulses turning normal folks apeshit crazy and a bit zombie-like is one of my favorite stories, and the potential for it to kick all sorts of ass as a movie is there… let’s hope Roth doesn’t f*ck it up.
While chatting with MTV, Roth started comparing what happens in CELL with the events following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans… check it out: You can really look at New Orleans almost as an allegory for it, I mean look what happened there, within hours people were like going crazy and killing each other. The army didn’t show up for five days and the police force quit and nobody knew what to do. Think that it’s already happened in this country so recently.
While I’m not sure if cell phone crazies and the people of New Orleans are really all that similar, I can definitely see his point. I’d say Roth’s biggest challenge at this point is figuring out a way make the look and feel of CELL different than 28 WEEKS LATER, both of which deal with the same issue of dealing with ‘zombies’ who are actually just ‘crazy’. Should be interesting, to say the least…
To check out more of what Roth had to say, including his thoughts on what it’s going to be like working on such an epic scale, click HERE, and be sure to check out HOSTEL: PART II in theaters everywhere this Friday.