Machete Kills is on the way

Since Robert Rodriguez’s fake-trailer-done-gone Machete managed to pull in roughly four times its $10m budget at the box office, the promise at the end of the movie of a sequel called Machete Kills is now being fulfilled. Shooting, in all senses of the word, starts in April.

The movie sees the eponymous former Federale recruited by the gringo government to track down a Mexican cartel leader, who has teamed up with a deranged billionaire to raise hell with a space weapon of some sort. Sounds a bit elaborate for a grindhouse-style picture, but then Rodriguez has tended to treat the genre as an exercise in fanboy masturbation rather than staying true to the spirit, as Tarantino’s Death Proof did more successfully. Although star Danny Trejo has not yet officially signed on, it’s surely only a matter of time. Rodriguez is reportedly also expecting other cast members, including Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan, to return. The third in the series, titled Machete Kills Again, has reportedly also been greenlit.