Rutger Hauer To Star In Feature-Length Version Of Hobo With A Shotgun
“I’m gonna sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight!”
In 2007 there was a contest at SXSW that invited filmmakers to create their own fake grindhouse-style movie trailers to go along with the promotion for the Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez filmGrindhouse. The winner, by a great margin, wasHobo with a Shotgun, from Nova Scotia directorJason Eisener.
The young director, who worked in a comic book store when his film won the contest, sawHobo with a Shotgunattached to Canadian prints ofGrindhouse, and immediately startedtalking about the possibility of a feature-length version. It’s taken a while to make that happen (Eisener has made the very popular shortTreevengein the interim) but now the feature version of of his grindhouse trailer is about to begin production. In the lead role, he’s got a new hobo:Rutger Hauer. Is there any better casting choice than that?
AICNhas the news, saying that the film starts shooting tomorrow. Neither AICN norTwitch, which also reports the news, has any further detail on the film, other than the fact that original hobo actorDavid Bruntwill appear as a cop.
I love seeing an enterprising filmmaker like Eisener get a chance to work on a bigger canvas, and I’m really curious to see how he makes this work. It seems like an even tougher task than expandingMachete. (OrMacGruber, for that matter, also based on very brief material.)
A big part of the appeal of the trailer was the narration, which frequently repeated the title in a growled voice that sounded half-drunk. “Hobo…with a shotgun!” How do you make this work as a feature, where tricks like that aren’t available? Casting Rutger Hauer is a great start. Will this be a straight-up, grungy action movie, almost like a gun-toting companion toHouse of the Devil, or will Eisener push it in a more outrageous direction, to something that resemblesBlack Dynamite?
Here’s the originalHobo with a Shotguntrailer (NSFW) as well as an embed ofTreevenge.
