Eli Roth Not Involved With Hostel III

Eli Roth has been doing some phone interviews over the last couple days to promote Inglorious Basterds, and Shock Till You Drop got a lot of info out of the director about various upcoming projects. Most notably, he says that he’s learned that he really only wants to direct original stories that he writes. And while the idea of doing sequels hasn’t been ruled out, Roth has nothing to do with Hostel III, of which he says “If I started something and other people want to continue it, go for it. I’m just not involved in any way.” So what is Roth doing?

Despite a lot of talk about Trailer Trash over the last couple years, which was pitched as a Grindhouse-esque collection of faux movie trailers, it seems like Endangered Species could still be next. That’s the film that Roth teased in an interview at Cannes, which he’d now like to cast in the fall and shoot hopefully this year, or at latest next spring. Will he still use some of that budget to make the full version of his Grindhouse trailer Thanksgiving, as he also said at Cannes? Let’s hope so, as Thanksgiving remains the most entertaining thing he’s done to date. (Really, after Grindhouse failed to make money, was anyone really dying to finance Trailer Trash? Probably not, even though he’s described it as a Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Amazon Women on the Moon style comedy more than a horror film.)

Roth also confirms that his adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell is dead, though the Weinsteins could well make it with someone else. “I walked off Cell kind of quietly,” Roth says. “There was just sort of a difference in opinion on how to make to film and what the story should be, and there’s a different direction the studio wants to go with it.” He’s still producing the RZA film The Man With the Iron Fist, though, as well as the remake of Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse and the exorcism film Cotton, which is now in post-production.