It's getting on for seven years since Robert Rodriguez's Sin City breathed green-screen life into Frank Miller's noir comic series. Since then there's been constant talk of a sequel and much in the way of development hell. But we finally seem closer than ever to Sin City 2 actually happening, with Rodriguez announcing at the SXSW festival that he plans to return to Miller World in the summer, right after shooting his Machete sequel, Machete Kills, in the spring.

"You work on a number of projects, and then everything eventually bottlenecks," says Rod. "You develop a number of films simultaneously, and then maybe one will go. This time it just happens that everything got announced at the same time. We'll probably be editing Machete while we shoot Sin City. It'll be summer and it'll be hot, so it'll be nice and cool inside with all the green screens."

He also confirmed what's already been widely reported: that the film will be based on A Dame To Kill For, and on two new Miller-penned stories that haven't as yet been published. "You won't find those in a book. Those will be surprises."

We know (or think we know) that one of those stories is called The Long Bad Night, but the third has yet to be revealed. Last we heard last summer, William Monahan (The Departed) was giving the screenplay an extra polish. There's no announced cast yet, but A Dame To Kill For once again involves Marv, which might indicate that talks are at least underway with Mickey Rourke. Rourke has previously sounded deeply ambivalent about returning to the make-up chair though. So that'll be interesting.

Of course, we've heard before that shooting was imminent, only for this to slip back down the schedule again. Could this be the time it finally goes before the cameras? Watch this space as summer approaches and we'll see...