This afternoon at Comic-Con, Robert Rodriguez appeared to introduce his new company Quick Draw and talk a little bit about his upcoming plans. And the good news is that he also shared a little about the state of the union on films he's been talking about for a while.
First up, following Machete's strong DVD performance, Rodriguez has had a green light on Machete Kills, the sequel, and is optimistic that he'll be able to follow that with Machete Kills Again, which will be a "a space opera with a machete-shaped lightsaber. To see a badass Mexican in space is really rare in science fiction. We’re at least going to shoot a trailer for that and put it in front of Machete Kills."
And because some film projects never quite die, what news on Sin City 2? "Frank has written a script for Sin City 2. It’s called A Dame To Kill For. We’re following the structure of the first film with 3 stories and a wrap-around. There's two new stories in there; one is called The Long Bad Night. It could be shot as early as this year – this is the closest we’ve been and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen this year. I’d love to do that in 3D, because I have an idea to do that in a way that 3D hasn’t been used before."
He also explained his plans for Spy Kids 4, out this summer. "Spy Kids 4 is out next month. That’s going to be in 4D, and that means there’s going to be scratch-and-sniff. This stuff smells amazing. There are 8 instances during the movie where a number will flash on the screen and you then smell that. Some of those are pretty good and some are very wrong. Even if you’re not a kid you’re going to have fun. I did this with Ricky Gervais and Joel McHale so it’s not just for kids."
Meanwhile, his Quick Draw Productions will be overseeing a film based on Heavy Metal magazine, another anthology piece that Rodriguez has now taken over (David Fincher had it a couple of years back).
Rodriguez also announced the opening of a Frank Frazetta museum to display the cult artist's masterworks permanently, which will be based in Austin, Texas. More excitingly for those of us not in the Lone Star State, they've also started to work on a Frank Frazetta film with different artists creating landscapes and scenes in the distinctive Frazetta style. First up, Fire And Ice and if that works, Death Dealer. We saw a selection of pre-production art, which consisted basically of women who aspire one day to be scantily clad and men rich in muscle and fantastical landscapes and gi-normous beasties and yet more women with large bosoms barely tethered by strings with pretensions to bikini-dom. It was kinda cool, if you like that sort of thing.