Danny Trejo’s Best Character Is Coming Back With A Major Twist?
At SXSW, Robert Rodrigeuz admitted that the fan demand for Danny Trejo's Machete Kills Again In Space is getting to be so much, the movie may be inevitable.
It’s been years since the last film in Danny Trejo’s action franchise, Machete, but finally, director Robert Rodriguez is giving fans hope that the long-awaited third film will happen. Speaking with Deadline at the SXSW festival, the legendary filmmaker was promoting Hypnotic when asked about his biggest franchise since Spy Kids. He admits that the first film only happened because of fan demand from seeing the fake trailer during Grindhouse and that the third film, Machete Kills Again In Space, was on the same trajectory.
Machete Kills Again in Space was a fake trailer with the second film, Machete Kills, as an obvious ripoff of the classic sequel technique of taking the same movie and changing the setting. For other examples, there’s Jason X, Muppets in Space, Emmanuelle in Space, and Leprechaun in Space. Like his Grindhouse co-director Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez is a fan of old Hollywood and knows how to twist cliches to become relevant and entertaining again.
Danny Trejo was never supposed to be an action star, and Machete wasn’t supposed to do so well that it launched a sequel, never mind a trilogy. The character started in the family-friendly Spy Kids films as the brother of Antonio Banderas’ Gergorio, and still makes kid-approved cameos after his R-rated action films hit theaters. Rodriguez claims it’s an alternate universe, while Trejo thinks that’s what the kid’s crazy uncle does when he’s not babysitting.
Making more Machete movies makes sense following the first film’s success, which made $44 million against a budget of only $10 million. The second film, Machete Kills, was significantly larger, with a star-studded cast of newcomers, including Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr., Amber Heard, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga, Vanessa Hudgens, and from Spy Kids, Antonio Banderas and Alexa Vega.
The grandiose sequel lost money, making only $18 million worldwide with a budget of $20 million. Critics that loved the first schlocky film were less kind to the second, which attempted to be bigger with more blood, guts, skin, explosions, and stars. In the process, it lost everything that made the first film a guilty pleasure.
When Danny Trejo was recently asked about Machete Kills Again in Space, he told fans to email Robert Rodriguez and “tell him to stop being scared.” No one disobeys Trejo, and given Rodriguez’s recent SXSW comments, it seems like the ball is slowly starting to roll for a third film. He has a deal with HBO to produce content for their streaming service, which would be the perfect home for a lower-budget, lower-scaled Machete film.
Danny Trejo’s schedule is never clear, as the man famously will accept any role that meets his minimum payment, with over 25 projects currently in various stages of production. The 79-year-old grandfather wants to earn as much as he can for his family, and though he started acting later in life purely by accident, he now has an almost 40-year career with over 400 credits to his name.
