Rodriquez talks sequels

I recently got a chance to visit the set of the new PREDATORS movie…you can’t see me, but I’m clapping my hands in anticipation…in Austin, TX. While we were there, we got a few minutes with producer, and always super-friendly to press, Robert Rodriguez. I can’t tell you a damn thing about PREDATORS until the embargo is lifted, but Rodriguez gave us some news on his upcoming projects. We got some info on SIN CITY 2, (R.I.P. Brittany Murphy) whether or not the MARIACHI trilogy will be out on Blu-ray soon, if he really means to make the upcoming MACHETE a franchise (see our interview with Danny Trejo) and relaunching SPY KIDS.

Do you have a timetable set for SIN CITY 2 is that something you still have on your plate?

Yeah we still talk about doing that as early/later next year, but I haven’t gotten into that yet.

Is the MARIACHI trilogy coming out on Blu-ray?

All three of them are coming out on Blu-ray sometime next year; we’ve been working on that.

You’re always talking about a million different projects, and there is always a million things going on with you, have you started to think about you’re 2010 is going to look like, and do you think you’re going to be producing more movies now that you’ve gotten a taste of it?

Yeah I definitely want to produce more because I have a bunch of projects that I’ve either written or have written, and I want to continue developing them and if can’t direct one right away cause I’m doing something else, I will love to still see it get made. So I would probably produce that and have somebody come in and do it here at the studio.

Is there a project or two in your past that you’ve started thinking about, that it would be a prefect thing for me to produce?

Oh, that I talked about doing in the past, that now I would produce? Yeah I have several of those. Now I can say ‘alright this will never get made unless I produce it’ because all these other things going on and I don’t want it to sit around cause the idea is really fresh for right now.

But getting back to the 2010 question, have you already thought about what some of the future or the next project you might be doing?

Well I know I owe The Weinstein’s another movie and I’ve already turned in a script for SPY KIDS, another SPY KIDS, which is a reboot of SPY KIDS. It’s different kids, not the old kids, and that one is really cool. I’d probably do that in the early part of next year March or April, and then I do have something for later in the year. I can’t say what that one is though. SPY KIDS I can say that cause they already announced it.

What I like about this SPY KIDS, it reminds me of the first one where it’s not so much just the kids, in fact it leans more towards the parents because you become a parent, you get a lot of ideas on where you can put some of this, you really couldn’t put some of this stuff on a R rated movie that you want to put in a film. This one I really like a lot, and the story in it is good and that name is just such a popular name with kids, I mean I get stopped…that’s your most loyal audience no matter how many people seen DESPERADO and DUSK TILL DAWN, kids stop me more than their parents, about how many times their kids have seen the SPY KIDS films and how much that still goes on, and so The Weinstein’s really wanted to do another one, and I had an idea for one. I even went back and pulled off my old original first script and found some ideas that I couldn’t bring to life back then. I was like ‘Wow these are good ideas.’ So they get to finally come back up. But they aren’t necessarily done for my kids. I did the first SPY KIDS before I had kids, I wrote it. Because it was mainly my experiences growing up in a family of 10 kids, and that’s where a lot of that comes from, just my siblings, I’m still really close to them and just remembering how we grew up, the parenthood part and the growing up part I like to utilize that somehow. They always say ‘write what you know’ I know that very well between having 5 kids and being in a family of 10 kids.

I don’t mean to jump back to SIN CITY 2 but it seems that the last few years we constantly talk to you about it and everyone’s asked about it, it’s a project that everyone’s seems to be very interested in, what would you categorize say like a percentage of this thing actually happening?

I can’t say no because I don’t know it’s no. I know Frank (Miller) wants to do it. I know I wanna do it and it’s always sort of time permitting kind of thin,g but its not like I can tell you definitely we’re starting…its not my next picture I know that. Doesn’t mean that its not the picture right after because that’s still a possibility.

Is there a script that actually is in existence that you’re happy with?

There has been a script since 2007.

But is it a script you’re happy with.

Well it’s the one that Frank wrote and we have to look at it now for now and go, is this really the one…I think it’s built up so much, like are we really going to satisfy everybody with what we have, should we add to it. It’s the thing we’ve always talked about, but now two years later going on three we’d probably make some adjustments but nothing that would take a long time. Its just a matter of…once we start…we can go into production…we can already start and in pre-production for this up to anything we wanted to.

There is rumor that it was going to be an original story is there any truth to that?

Well that script, it was pre-existing with some original stuff added to it to kind of catch yourself up with some character.

Are you involved with MADMEN?

Yeah I still have that. It’s at Weinstein, they still have that for me to produce, so after doing this I have some ideas on how to bring that to life. That will be good to do.

Did MACHETE turn out so good that you might try and franchise it, or is it a one off for you?

We always talked about making him a franchise character. Danny and I talked about it in ’94…maybe DESPERADO, that’s when I first mentioned the Machete character. So imagine that…he’s been bugging me since ’94.

I’m curious about MACHETE KILLS and MACHETE KILLS AGAIN. Do you like those names for sequels? Or were you joking around?

They’re part of…when the original trailer came out I made those jokingly. It could be. They’re fun titles. I do like MACHETE IN SPACE though.