Summary Grindhouse’s failure at the box office limited the opportunities for spinoff movies from the fake trailers, but the success of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving could revive interest in them.
Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun were two trailers from Grindhouse that received movies, while Don’t and Werewolf Women of the SS have yet to be made into films.
While Rob Zombie expressed interest in making Werewolf Women of the SS into a movie, Edgar Wright may not be as inclined to revisit Don’t, as it has become a cult oddity and his film Last Night in Soho explores similar themes.
With the release of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, there are only two fake trailers from Grindhouse left, but will these also become movies? Grindhouse was the brainchild of best pals Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, who wanted to make a tribute to the sleazy double-bill movie features they grew up with. Tarantino offered his unique take on a slasher movie with Death Proof, starring Kurt Russell as a stuntman who likes to murder young women with his “death proof” stunt car. Rodriguez contributed Planet Terror, a gory B-movie about a zombie outbreak.
It was highly anticipated by film fans, but sadly, this didn’t translate to general audiences. Grindhouse’s long runtime and confusion about its double feature premise – where some viewers left after the first section, thinking the movie was over – led to the film only grossing around half its production budget. Still, it developed a cult over time, and one of Grindhouse’s lasting legacies are the hilarious fake trailers that were created for it.
Related: Thanksgiving Review: Eli Roth’s Faux Trailer Becomes A New Slasher Classic
Thanksgiving Is The Third Fake Grindhouse Trailer To Get A Movie Spinoff
It follows Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun
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One of the most popular fake previews featured in Grindhouse was Thanksgiving, Eli Roth’s incredibly gory take on an ’80s slasher movie. The trailer was essentially a highlight reel of bloody kills, but while there was talk in the immediate aftermath of Grindhouse’s release of Roth directing a feature version, nothing came of it. Rodriguez was the first to produce a film out of these fake trailers, where he expanded his Machete preview into an all-star action movie led by Danny Trejo’s titular avenger; it even received a direct sequel in 2013’s Machete Kills.
Following Grindhouse’s failure in the U.S., Death Proof and Planet Terror were released as separate movies theatrically overseas.
The next trailer to receive a movie spinoff was Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun. Eisener’s original faux trailer won a contest to appear in Grindhouse, and while the eventual movie version wasn’t as successful as Machete, it still earned better reviews. More than 15 years after Grindhouse’s release, Roth’s Thanksgiving has finally arrived, and is receiving surprisingly positive reviews too; so much so there’s already talk of a sequel.
Why Don’t And Werewolf Women Of The SS Haven’t Been Made Into Movies Yet
The failure of Grindhouse hurt Wright and Zombie’s plans
That leaves Edgar Wright’s Don’t and Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS as the last, unmade Grindhouse trailers. The latter preview was Zombie parodying exploitation movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, and featured appearances by Udo Kier and Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu. Don’t was arguably the most conceptual of the bunch, with the premise being that it’s a trailer for a British horror movie that’s been heavily recut by an American distributor to hide the fact it’s British, so the resulting trailer is a confusing jumble of gory images.
Related: Every Tarantino & Rodriguez Grindhouse Movie Ranked From Worst To Best
Around the time Grindhouse was released, Wright claimed he had discussed making Don’t into one half of a potential Grindhouse 2, with Roth potentially making Thanksgiving as the other section. Following the movie’s underperformance, plans for a sequel came to nothing. Zombie also confirmed to SciFiNow in 2013 that Werewolf Women of the SS didn’t become a movie because of Grindhouse bombing at the box office.
Could Don’t Or Werewolf Women Still Receive Movies?
The success of Thanksgiving could revive these unmade movies
Now that Roth’s Thanksgiving has finally arrived, there will likely be renewed conversations about Don’t or Werewolf Women of the SS getting adaptations too. Zombie hasn’t commented on the chances of the latter in many years, but if he was approached with proper financing for a feature version, he would likely consider it. In the aforementioned SciFiNow chat, he confirmed there were discussions about making spinoffs from the trailers, and proclaimed Werewolf Women of the SS could have been “a great movie.”
Wright would probably be less inclined to revisit Don’t, however. The filmmaker reminisced about how much fun it was to make the trailer with Empire in 2022 but reflected “Maybe Don’t has become exactly the film that it was destined to be,” and that it lives on as a cult oddity. Wright’s 2021 film Last Night in Soho itself feels like the kind of homage to old-school British horror and Italian giallo he was exploring in Don’t too. For now, there are no plans for the remaining Grindhouse trailers Don’t and Werewolf Women of the SS to get movie spinoffs, but the success of Thanksgiving could change that.
Source: SciFiNow, Empire