Eli Roth Shows Villagers Their First Movie - Luckily, Not One of His Own
Eli Roth is set to direct his first full length feature film since Hostel II, The Green Inferno, which is based on the 1980 Italian movie Cannibal Holocaust. The story follows an "idealistic student and a group of naive do-gooders who are captured by cannibalistic Indios after their plane crash lands in the Peruvian jungle."
The full cast for the film has been announced, and Roth is ready to put them to work in some crazy conditions! He will be shooting the film near a remote native village located on the Amazon river in Peru. This place has no electricity or running water. The director took a small film crew to the village to get permission to shoot there from the locals, and while they were there they showed the residents there their first movie. The movie he ended up showing them was Cannibal Holocaust, and guess what? The natives thought it was hilarious! In an interview withMovieline Roth said,
"The location that we found is truly spectacular. It’s so far up the Amazon, no one has ever shot there. The last person anywhere near there was Werner Herzog for Aguirre, the Wrath of God. We said, ‘Can we shoot here?’ and talked to them, and our producers said ‘We have to explain to them what a movie is. They’ve never seen a television.’ So we brought a generator and set up a television. I thought they were going to show them E.T. or The Wizard of Oz, but they showed them Cannibal Holocaust to see how much they could handle….The villagers thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.”
If you haven't seen Cannibal Holocaust, check it out... it's not so funny. In fact it's been banned in several countries because of its depiction of extremely graphic sexual assaults, violent beatings and animal cruelty.
I think it's cool that the movie will be shot in such a remote location, it will definitely add some very cool production value to the film. I was never a big fan of Roth's Hostel films, but I hope The Green Inferno turns out good. The world could use another good crazy cannibal movie.
According to the recent press released, the movie will start shooting on November 5th, and the cast includes Lorenza Izzo (Aftershock), Ariel Levy (Aftershock), Aaron Burns, Daryl Sabara (John Carter, Machete), Kirby Bliss Blanton (Project X), Magda Apanowicz and actress/singer Sky Ferreira.
Are you looking forward to Roth's next movie?
Here's what the rest of the Press Release included:
Worldview Entertainment is financing and producing the horror thriller, which is directed by Roth and based on a screenplay he co-wrote withAftershock co-writer Guillermo Amoedo. Exclusive Media is handling the international sales to the film that will be presented to buyers at the upcoming American Film Market by Alex Walton, Exclusive Media’s President of International Sales and Distribution. CAA, which arranged financing for the film, is handling domestic rights.
Roth is producing The Green Inferno alongside Worldview CEO, Christopher Woodrow, Worldview COO, Molly Conners, and Sobras International producers Miguel Asensio Llamas and Nicolás Lopez. Worldview’s Maria Cestone, Sarah Johnson Redlich and Hoyt David Morgan will executive produce. Filming will take place over the next few weeks in Peru before moving to Santiago, Chile.
This will be Roth’s directorial follow up to the successful Hostel franchise, which collectively grossed over $300 million worldwide. Most recently Roth co-wrote, produced and starred in Aftershock; produced and co-wrote The Man with the Iron Fists for Universal Studios, starring Russell Crowe, RZA and Lucy Liu with Quentin Tarantino presenting; produced The Last Exorcism Part II with Strike Entertainment for StudioCanal; and is currently filming his new series “Hemlock Grove” for Netflix.
The Green Inferno is Worldview’s second collaboration with Roth after teaming up to finance and produce Ti West’s (The Innkeepers, The House of the Devil) horror thriller, The Sacrament, currently in pre-production in Savannah, Georgia.