Robert Rodriguez New Movie, T.V. Show, and Bio: "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" Filmmaker As Busy As Ever
Since before vampires became "cool" and Hollywood movie studios began buying up every piece of vampire fiction property available, there was the 1996 cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn ... and 1992's Interview With The Vampire.
Now, 18 years after the release of Dawn, Rodriguez is behind the launch of the new From Dusk Till Dawn television series, which will air March 11 on his El Rey Network, which he is founder and chairman of. The El Rey Network is available on Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable.
According to Variety, Rodriguez directed four episodes of the new 10-episode series and Netflix announced Thursday that it will air the subsequent episodes on a weekly basis for its Canada, Ireland, Netherlands and U.K. subscribers.
The course of the television series will follow the bank-robbing brothers Seth and Richie Gecko, played by D.J. Cotrona and Zane Holtz respectively, as they flee from the law, hijack a pastor and his family's RV into Mexico and end up at a strip club with some bloodthirsty strippers.
The pilot episode is scheduled to premiere for audiences at the South by Southwest Film Festival on Saturday in Austin at the Vimeo Theater.
Following the premiere of the series, Rodriguez and the rest of the cast will be part of a Q&A session that will be broadcasted on the El Rey Network.
According to the website Comic Book Resources, Rodriguez will also display some of his collection of paintings by the late artist Frank Frazetta at South by Southwest on Saturday with all the proceeds going toward the Frazetta Museum in Pennsylvania.
As if that wasn't enough Rodriguez news for one day, the trailer for his upcoming film Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the long-awaited sequel to the fanboy favorite and comic book adaptation Sin City, was released as well.
The sequel, which Rodriguez co-directed with legendary comic book writer and the graphic novel's creator Frank Miller, opens in theaters Aug. 11 and will see the reprisal of Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba and Mickey Rourke. Also starring in the film is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Ray Liotta and Rosario Dawson.
It's been more than two decades since the 45-year-old had his directorial debut with El Mariachi in 1992. And since then the writer, director, producer and grindhouse wizard has helped launch the careers of Antonio Banderas, Selma Hayek, Alexa Pena-Vega and Danny Trejo.
Trejo has starred in nine of Rodriguez's films, while Banderas has been in eight, Hayek in seven, and Cheech Marin in seven.
Rodriguez has worked and collaborated with many talented actors, writers and directors during his celebrated career, such as Banderas, Hayek and Miller, but most notably with long-time friend Quentin Tarantino, who starred alongside George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn.
The pair have gone on to individually, and collaboratively, popularize the grindhouse film genre, or "B movies" otherwise called exploitation films, which are typically low budgeted and feature heavy action sequences, and sexual and drug related content.
The San Antonio, Texas native, however, is no stranger to family films as well. The 2001 release of Spy Kids, which grossed roughly $112 million at the box office, launched a four-film franchise over the following decade.
Spy Kids was also the flagship film of the director's newly formed production company Troublemaker Studios.
Rodriguez's other most-notable franchise is the El Mariachi Trilogy, followed the life of a traveling mariachi, played by Carlos Gallardo but replaced in the following films with Bandares. In the film, El Mariachi becomes entangled in a criminal syndicate after being mistaken for a notorious murderer.
The story of El Mariachi continues in the film 1995's Desperado, adding Hayek into the mix as El Mariachi's love interest, and concludes in 2003 with Once Upon A Time In Mexico, starring Johnny Depp alongside Bandares and Hayek.
Besides directing, producing and writing his upcoming films and television series, Rodriguez created the El Rey Network with Hollywood incubator FactoryMade Ventures, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal reported that the creation of the network came out of the Comcast and NBCUniversal merger in 2011 with the stipulation that Comcast distribute a minimum of 10 channels dedicated to minority owned networks.
Aspire, created by Magic Johnson, and a musical channel developed by Sean "Diddy" Combs was also among the list of new channels featured this past December.
El Rey, which is financially backed by Univsion, was created with intention providing Hispanic audiences with that taste of vintage television shows such as Starsky & Hutch and The X-Files. The channel also features grindhouse, horror and Kung-Fu flicks.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Rodriguez and Lionsgate's Asian partner Celestial Pictures signed a multiyear deal to air some notable martial arts films such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The Sword of Swords, and Executioners From Shaolin.
Starting in April, Rodriguez will host his own show on the network that will feature famous directors interviewing other directors.
The Mexican-American filmmaker was born June 20, 1968 and was the middle child in a family with 10 children. His mother Rebecca was a nurse while his father Cicilio was a salesman.
Rodriguez became enthralled with the idea of becoming a filmmaker and during his teen years he would make many short films with a Super-8 camera using family and friends as actors. He applied to the University of Texas' film program but his poor grades kept him from getting in.
However, after continuing to make a series of short films, UT accepted Rodriguez based on his talent but didn't receive his degree from its College of Communications until 2009, according to IMDB.
To finance his first feaure film El Mariachi, Rodriguez made $7,000 by being a guinea pig for scientific studies. His intention was to sell the film to Spanish video markets so that he could break on to the Hollywood scene.
The film eventually made its way into the Sundance Film Festival where it became an instant classic and gaining Rodriguez Hollywood notoriety as Columbia Pictures gave him a distribution deal.
Before being a Hollywood filmmaker, Rodriguez, who is also a talented artist, met fellow Austin resident Elizabeth Avellan and married her in 1990. Until their divorce in 2006, the pair had five children together.
Rodriguez decided to leave the Director's Guild of America in 2005 before production began on Sin City. The filmmaker told reporters his reason to leave was because he wanted to be able to give Miller directing credit on the film.
"I didn't want Frank Miller to be treated just as a writer because he is the only one who has actually been to 'Sin City,'" Rodriguez said. "I am making such a literal interpretation of his book that I'd have felt weird taking directing credit without him.
Rodriguez began taking a move out of George Lucas's playbook by filming strictly digital beginning with 2002's Spy Kids 2: Island of Los Dreams.
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