Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving Movie Has Kicked Off Production

Eli Roth is bringing Thanksgiving to the big screen years after it appeared as a fake trailer that featured in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse, and the film is bringing some big names to the horror offering. Deadline reported that along with Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks and Milo Manheim, Gina Gershon, Tim Dillon and Rick Hoffman will also be joining the ensemble.

Sony Pictures teased the start of production on the new movie with an image of a director’s chair containing a very nasty looking ax, as well as displaying Roth’s name and the movie’s title in bloody lettering.

For those who did not see the original “fake trailer” for the movie in Rodriguez and Tarantino’s gory-filled romp, Deadline was able to provide a quick reminder of the 15 year old start of the movie. The summary reads:

“The Thanksgiving trailer presented the gory teaser about a pseudo movie in which a slasher makes his own carving board out of the inhabitants of a Massachusetts town that makes a big annual fuss over the annual turkey day. One of the pivotal scenes involved Roth himself, separated from his head while in the throes of passion with a date in a convertible. It was popular enough that plans formulated to make a feature-length blood feast with Roth at the helm, but 15 years has passed since the original Grindhouse release and you could be forgiven for thinking that Thanksgiving was never coming.”

Related: What We Hope to See From Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving

Eli Roth Loved Making the Grindhouse Trailer For Thanksgiving

Every now and again there are fake movie moments that lead to real projects later down the line. Back when he was making the trailer for Thanksgiving in 2007, Roth already had the whole movie it was promoting planned out. At the time he commented:

“My friend Jeff, who plays the killer pilgrim — we grew up in Massachusetts, we were huge slasher movie fans and every November we were waiting for the Thanksgiving slasher movie. We had the whole movie worked out: A kid who’s in love with a turkey and then his father killed it and then he killed his family and went away to a mental institution and came back and took revenge on the town. I called Jeff and said, ‘Dude, guess what, we don’t have to make the movie, we can just shoot the best parts.'”

The one thing guaranteed is that all of the bloody, gore, nudity and depravity that the Grindhouse trailers have already produced – Rodriguez’s Machete and Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun – will be brought to the party in Thanksgiving, and gives hope to the other trailers, which were Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of The SS and Edgar Wright’s Don’t, could someday become a reality.

There is currently no release date for Thanksgiving, but with the movie in production now it is likely that we will be hearing much more about the film in the coming months.