Grindhouse: Rodriguez To Turn They Call Him Machete Into Feature Length Movie

As you probably know by now, Grindhouse consists of two exploitation films, each with its own trailers for non existent b-movies. When the first trailer was unveiled, fans went crazy over a clip from the fake movie titled They Call Him Machete starring Rodriguez regular Danny Trejo. Well the response to the trailer footage was so great, that Rodriguez has decided to make the movie.

"I've got a direct-to-video in the States Machete movie, and internationally it could go out as a feature. We've got a script already and Danny Trejo says, 'I'm in the best shape of my life, bro. I am so ready to do this movie!' So it's really cool," revealed Rodriguez at SXSW. "I'm going to direct some other sequences in it for sure, and maybe the whole thing. I don't know if I should do it like El Mariachi, but I want it to look really good. That trailer came out fantastic. Danny is really great in it and there's some other surprise actors that show up in this trailer. And it just looks fantastic."

Rodriguez also shared the origin of the idea:

"It's an idea I came up with back during Desporado. When I met Danny, I said, 'This guy should be like the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme or Charles Bronson, putting out a movie every year and his name should be Machete.' So I decided to do that way back when, never got around to it until finally now. So now, of course, I want to keep going and do a feature."

Very cool. But why release it direct to video in the states? Why not launch a Grindhouse franchise and let other directors contribute. Have They Call Him Machete be one of the films in the next double feature? I'm sure people would buy tickets, even if it was a smaller scaled release.