As many of you know, I am very not a fan of Eli Roth’s body of work thus far. Hostel‘s one I like but for the most part I keep waiting for him to deliver on the promise that inexplicably got him considered a ‘Master of Horror’ way before I feel he’d earned it. Though he’s been somewhat busy with his work as an actor in masterpieces like Inglourious Basterds and Piranha 3-D, there hasn’t been a lot of chatter on his directorial projects. Over a year ago we ran news on Endangered Species, his big science fiction project. It was an unknown quantity. We knew it was a reaction to Cloverfield and Transformers, an expensive (by Roth’s standards not a studio’s) stretch in a new and possibly PG-13 director for the filmmaker. Interesting.
It’s been a while since anything came up about it but while promoting this week’s The Last Exorcism Roth provided a tiny bit of new info.
A quick update from the gents at AICN:
Capone: Real quick, before I let you go–do you know what you are doing next?
ER: I’m just focusing on finishing the press tour for this and then I want to finish my script ENDANGERED SPECIES. We literally sold EXORCISM to Lionsgate and they put us on August 27, so suddenly the press tour kind of came right in the middle of my writing time, but that’s something I want to jump into next.
Capone: And that’s your science fiction piece, right?
ER: Yes, that’s my sci-fi movie. That’s a tricky film; it’s going to be an expensive movie, so any changes I want to make, I want to make them on the page as opposed to shooting and then re-shooting or fixing them in editing. It’s not like I can just shoot and shoot and figure it out later; this thing has to be mapped out very, very carefully.
Capone: Any idea when you might be shooting that?
ER: Nope. When it’s ready to shoot.
So it’s not a remake of the 80’s cable staple starring Hoyt Axton. No cattle. Makes me sad a little.