Eli Roth Clarifies Untrue Details About His Future

May 5, 2008
Source: Official Blog
by Alex Billington

A few weeks ago, news hit regarding one of Hostel creator Eli Roth's future projects. Although our headline didn't play it off this way, the original source's headline said that Eli Roth was "ditching horror" in favor of a new PG-13 science fiction project that was inspired by Cloverfield and Transformers. Roth recently clarified the situation on his official blog, saying that the headline was "not only untrue," but that it made it "seem like I'm like spitting in the face of everyone who's ever supported me." He also went on to explain how the reporter actually came up with the idea that the project was inspired by those two aforementioned movies when in reality he was simply referring to both them for the sake of explaining the PG-13 rating. This is an interesting case of a journalistic spin gone wrong.

Roth first explains how he mentioned both Cloverfield and Transformers to the reporter because he was so shocked that he was directing a PG-13 movie next after creating three hard R horror flicks.

"I explained to him, that it's not that I wanted to or set out to make a PG-13 film, but that the idea best lent itself to a PG-13 rating. I said the mistake that studios make is that films get watered down or castrated to fit a certain rating, and that rating doesn't necessarily best serve the story. 'Hostel' would not have worked as a PG-13 movie, because a very important ingredient to the story is the violence. A film like 'Cloverfield', in my mind, was the perfect PG-13 movie, because it was really scary, it had a good amount of violence, but just the shot of the girl's chest exploding in the tent was all you really needed. It wasn't about the gore, it was about the monster. We got in a conversation about 'Transformers,' which I loved. Those are two films that had mass destruction and chaos and were very fun PG-13 films. 'Iron Man' is the latest example of a great PG-13 film. I told the reporter that I was really inspired by these films, and that I had an idea that was in that genre that I was getting ready to announce."

I've said many times before how much I admire Roth as a filmmaker. I can't wait to hear about his next project, not necessarily because it's "inspired" by Cloverfield and Transformers, but because of his passion as a filmmaker. Whenever someone is this passionate about what they do, the results are always incredible. Roth later mentions, "I'm only going to make ideas that excite me. Period. Some of those ideas are R rated, some of them are G rated, and some of them are in between." That's such a great statement and I'm glad he's simply going to do what he wants and not what will make him money. For that reason especially, I'm excited to see what this project is all about.

"I'm in a very fortunate position that I have the luxury of choosing what project I do next, and I'm only going to do an idea that I'm so fired up about it won't let me sleep at night. And I've had crazy insomnia working on this new project." Unfortunately we're still awaiting an announcement on this project and what exactly it will be about - but Roth promises its coming soon. Stay tuned and we'll update you the moment we hear something! In the meantime, you can read the full post on his official blog.

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