Since breaking out in 2002 with Cabin Fever, Eli Roth's name has been synonymous with the horror. Nearly every movie he's worked on since, from the Hostel series to The Last Exorcism to Grindhouse, has been associated with the genre, but in recent years he's shown interest in branching out. In addition to the kung-fu screenplay he wrote with Wu Tang Clan's The RZA, The Man With The Iron Fists, he's long talked about an apocalyptic disaster movie and now apparently he's decided to make it his next project.
Screen Daily caught up with Roth at the Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival recently and the filmmaker confirmed that Endangered Species will be his next directorial effort. First announced back in 2009, the film will have a budget somewhere in the $40-60 million range, making it by far the largest production he's ever done (Cabin Fever was made for $1.5 million; Hostel was made for $4.8 million and Hostel II cost $10.2 million). The project will be Roth's first time directing since 2007, not counting the short film he made as part of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds.
While I'd at least be moderately curious to see what Roth would do with a bigger budget, I'm more upset that he's doing Endangered Species instead of Thanksgiving. When I spoke to the director last August he said that he and co-writer Jeff Rendell had begun working on the feature version of the fake trailer, but there was some concern that they would get distracted "talking about girls from high school and going on Facebook and screwing around." The Screen Daily story doesn't mention the Thanksgiving movie, but let's hope that it's still in the cards.
