When Robert Rodriguez opened MACHETE KILLS with a teaser for the similarly promised MACHETE KILLS AGAIN…IN SPACE (co-starring Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio, no less) it pretty much seemed that he’d given up on the idea on actually making the film he'd originally teased in the first MACHETE, and had settled for making a 2-minute-or-so trailer to give the admittedly awesome joke it’s proper due. When KILLS became the lowest domestic earner of Rodriguez’ career since fucking EL MARIACHI (no joke), it seemed all-but-certain that it’d be the last time we saw Danny Trejo’s legendary, un-fuck-withable Mexican on the big screen.
Then what’s this that Trejo said to Halloween Daily News last weekend?
"Robert and I are going to start to do MACHETE KILLS IN SPACE, so that's going to be awesome. Absolutely. We're going to be working on it this year.”
No word on whether he’d be tackling this before or after his long-in-development live-action remake of Ralph Bakshi’s FIRE AND ICE, which he was still very much talking up in relation to his Frank Frazetta pop-up exhibit at SXSW last month.
It’s a known fact that Rodriguez and Trejo really love this character, but the box-office and critical failure of MACHETE KILLS had to deflate the wind from their sails a little bit. I had a grand old time with the cheesetacular follow-up (due in no small part to its batshit supporting cast, particularly Mel Gibson, Marko Zaror, and a going-for-broke Demian Birchir), but even ardent Rodriguez fans were throwing it under the bus for its slapdash effects, nonsensical script, and sometimes aggressive refusal to settle into a particular tone.
Having said that, I think that going the HELLRAISER IV/LEPRACHAUN 4/JASON X route of sending this baby into orbit could finally be the exploitation spectacular everyone wanted when the original MACHETE trailer rolled in front of GRINDHOUSE. The …IN SPACE fake trailer alone, with its lightsaber machetes, bad space puns, and dueling clone MACHETEs had many walking out of KILLS proclaiming it as being way better than the film that followed, and going “all galactic and shit” could be the way to get folks back onboard with the character. Rodriguez hasn’t really done a full-on space epic yet (though SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER is very much in the sci-fi mold), and I love the idea of him taking the MOONRAKER-type premise of KILLS into overdrive for this threequel.
But the last one really did fizzle out quite unspectacularly, so let’s see if Robert can generate the excitement (and amass the funds) necessary to get this one made while the now-70-year-old actor can still swing his machete, get the ladies, and, you know, grimace.
Trailer - Machete Kills Again ..... by WickedVision_Netchannel
If Rodriguez and Trejo actually get this up and running before the end of the year, we could potentially see Machete, She, and La Camaleon floating in zero-g sometime in 2016.
