16 Years Ago Today, A Fake Trailer Was Made Into a Successful Grindhouse Franchise

It has been 16 years since a movie hit theaters that was originally based on a fake trailer, but it became a success anyway. In 2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez co-directed a movie called Grindhouse, and this included a film by each director, both shot in the classic grindhouse format. For Rodriguez, his movie was Planet Terror, which was a zombie movie with lots of gore and grindhouse horror action. For Tarantino, his movie was Death Proof, which was an action movie with a serial killer named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) who meets his match with three young women who turn the tables on him.

However, in between those two movies was a series of fake trailers. Each of the trailers was for a grindhouse-style movie from a huge-name director.

Machete Was a Movie Based on the Grindhouse Fake Trailer

Grindhouse had five fake trailers in the movie, and one of them was shot by Rodriguez, which was something he did in addition to his Planet Terror movie. This fake trailer was for a movie called Machete. The trailer was based on a script that Rodriguez had written in the 1990s with Danny Trejo in mind, and the director brought in Trejo to star in the fake trailer. According to Rodriguez, he wanted to make an exploitation movie for Trejo that was similar to older movies with Charles Bronson and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

What is really interesting about the trailer is that Trejo had already played the character before in a more sanitized version. He played Machete in the Spy Kids movies. However, as the fake trailer showed, he was an ex-Federale from Mexico whom the United States government hired to do dangerous jobs for money, all off the books. After making the trailer and including it in Grindhouse, Rodriguez announced he was turning it into a feature-length movie at Troublemaker Studios.

The movie brought back Trejo as Machete, and his supporting cast was amazing. Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Lindsay Lohan, Don Johnson, Jessica Alba, and Robert De Niro all appeared in the movie. While not shot in grindhouse format, it was still shot like an exploitation movie, and it was a success. Made for $10.5 million, it made $45.5 million at the box office, and Rodriguez even shot a sequel.

Thanks to running his own production studio at his home, Rodriguez quickly finished the second movie, Machete Kills, and released it in 2013. However, this second movie cost $20 million to make and took a loss, only bringing in $17.5 million. Additions to the cast this time included Amber Heard, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexa Vega, Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Antonio Banderas, Tom Savini, Walton Goggins, and Demian Bichir. This cast is likely where the increased budget came from, and the budget proved too much for an exploitation movie.

Most of the Fake Grindhouse Trailers Have Now Become Real Movies

While Machete coming out just three years after Grindhouse was a quick turnaround, it wasn’t the only fake trailer that was turned into a feature-length movie. Besides Machete, the other fake trailers were Werewolf Women of the SS by Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects), Don’t by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), Thanksgiving by Eli Roth (Hostel), and Hobo with a Shotgun by Jason Eisener, John Davies, and Rob Cotterill. The last of these trailers won a contest at the South by Southwest Film Festival, which is why it was from unknown filmmakers.

Hobo with a Shotgun was the second movie to get a feature-length release after Grindhouse. Directed by Eisener and written by Davies, the movie followed the same story, which saw an unnamed Hobo who showed up in a small town and who went to war with a ruthless crime lord. Rutger Hauer starred as the unnamed Hobo, and he is the only big-name actor in the movie. The movie cost $3 million to make, and it only made $834,953 at the box office. However, this was a limited release and was meant to be a success on home video.

Werewolf Women of the SS was never made into a movie, and there is likely no chance that will ever happen. Wright has said he doesn’t have plans to turn Don’t into a real movie, mainly because he shot it to poke fun at the tropes in the horror genre. However, 13 years after Machete came out, the third of the five fake Grindhouse trailers was turned into a feature-length movie.

This was Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, and he released the film in 2023. The trailer was themed after movies like Halloween, My Bloody Valentine, and Silent Night, Deadly Night, and eventually Roth got to make his holiday horror movie. This ended up as another successful film based on the fake trailers, with a $46.6 million box office take on a $15 million budget. It was a basic slasher movie, which is what led to its success. All of this was thanks to Rodriguez, who came up with the first fake trailer and then turned Machete into a successful feature-length adaptation.