Eli Roth's "Transformerfield"?

[esoobaC .T bocaJ]

Eli Roth, the director of the gruesome "Hostel" movies, is aiming for a family crowd with his next project. Roth told reporters on Wednesday that he is two weeks away from finishing a script for a science-fiction action film inspired by the mainstream hits "Cloverfield" and "Transformers." [via Reuters]

"This will be my first big-budget, PG-13, mass-destruction movie," he said backstage at the music industry's NME Awards in Los Angeles. "I went total chaos and pandemonium." He declined to detail the plot ahead of a "big announcement" next month.

Films rated PG-13 in the United States strongly caution parents that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. But they are easier to market than R-rated films, which require viewers under 17 to be accompanied by an adult.

"I feel like I pushed the violence in R movies about as far as I can push it. I feel like I'm bled out. I wanna switch it up," said Roth. "Everyone I know has been saying 'When are you gonna do a movie my kids can see?' And finally, I'm gonna make a movie that 13-year-old kids can see."

While the "Hostel" films and Roth's equally violent 2002 feature debut "Cabin Fever" were set up at independent studio Lionsgate, he said he would shop the new project to "the big guns."

Roth said his latest project meant he is not turning his back on violent movies and he expected to fulfill the needs of his bloodthirsty fans by shooting some gratuitous violence to include on an unrated version of the DVD.

[Junkyard]

I, like so many others, do not know what to say.

[Invader_quirk]

I'll put him on my "crappy jackasses to scowl about" list.

[GregMcduck]

The gist I get from this is that Eli Roth wants to have sex with blood, and wants to make just another Eli Roth blood film, but the studio he signed up with demands a PG-13 film from him.

[esoobaC .T bocaJ]

what I got was that he hasn't signed to a studio yet, but is making it pg-13 because people asked him to.

[Tyrant]

The gist I get from this is that Eli Roth wants to have sex with blood, and wants to make just another Eli Roth blood film, but the studio he signed up with demands a PG-13 film from him.

  Maybe this will result in a film about giant robots that spray blood everywhere.

[Invader_quirk]

You mean like War of the Worlds?

[bratpop]

Giant Leprechauns. Mark my words.

[bratpop]

You mean like War of the Worlds?

Wow, that's scarily accurate. And pretty much the exact offspring of Transformers + Cloverfield too. Or rather, both those movies ripped of WOTW. I's askeered.

[Invader_quirk]

Mmmyep. Except WOTW didn't have any peeing in it.

[Tyrant]

And if Eli Roth is obsessed with having sex with blood, as Greg suggests, then we might be seeing giant robots spraying blood and trying to hump each other while someone videotapes it.

[Petey Wheatstraw]

Eli Roth is one of the best filmmakers currently working. I am sure that this will be excellent.

[Steve-O]

Roth comes off in interviews as a bit of a douche, and we've already debated the merits of gore ad infinitum, but he's actually a pretty good director.

I found Cabin Fever to be a bit too goofy to take seriously, but Hostel was a very well-directed horror film.  Roth did a great job of capturing both the beauty of Slovakia, and the contrasting gritty depravity of its seedy underbelly.  He's good at ratcheting up tension, and of making a scene seem much fouler than it actually is through effective use of cuts and framing.

For all the talk of Hostel lingering lovingly over close-ups of gore, I can only really think of one instance where that happens.  Most of the so-called "torture porn" is really just a combination of the shocking subject matter and clever direction forcing your imagination to fill in the blanks.  The long, "haunted house" tracking shot where Jay Hernandez is being dragged down a hall -- wherein we see a series of awfully nasty things happening, but at such a distance that we can't really make out exactly what's going on -- is one of the most effective and memorable horror scenes I can recall in the last decade or two.

You might want to give the guy a chance.  Who among us that saw Bad Taste and Dead Alive back in the day would have guessed that Peter Jackson had Lord of the Rings in him?

(cue Isaac in 5... 4... 3...)

UPDATE: Ha!  He snuck in before I could even finish my post.  I have a feeling he'll be back in this thread at some point, though.

[mrbasehart]

You might want to give the guy a chance.  Who among us that saw Bad Taste and Dead Alive back in the day would have guessed that Peter Jackson had Lord of the Rings in him?

(cue Isaac in 5... 4... 3...)

[bratpop]

Well, we all gave Sam Raimi a chance, and look how that turned out!