Multi-hyphenate Robert Rodriguez hasn't been sitting idle since he directed "Planet Terror," his half of "Grindhouse." Rodriguez followed up with the kids' movie "Shorts;" produced "Predators" (which was based on an old script Rodriguez had written 15 years prior); finally turned his fake "Grindhouse" trailer "Machete" into a feature-length film; and then rebooted himself with last year's "Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World." Typically prolific, Rodriguez has set himself up for an extremely busy sequel summer, first by shooting "Machete Kills," then immediately (or, perhaps, concurrently) starting to shoot "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For." Since shooting two films back-to-back wasn't enough of a feat, Rodriguez has added a third film to his slate, a remake of the 1983 animated film "Fire and Ice."
"That’s in the works to go right into after 'Sin City,' Frank Frazetta’s 'Fire and Ice,'" Rodriguez told THR. “We’re almost done with the script, we’ve got it pretty much 70 percent there — I’m really excited about that one." Rodriguez added: "I think the timing is going to work out just right and we’ll have a finished script in the next month or so. So that we can start lengthier pre-production and we can go right into pre-production – well, we’re actually in pre-production, sort of, or we’ve been doing a lot of the previsualization. But that would be the next thing after 'Sin City.'"
Rodriguez formally announced the remake at last year's Comic-Con, where he said that "Fire and Ice" would be shot with the same technology as "Sin City," with the idea being that the audience will feel "as if you stepped into one of his paintings."
Rodriguez is clearly a fan of the late fantasy artist, and taking the same approach as "Sin City" should excite fans more than Ralph Bakshi's 1983 original. Of course, Bakshi has his own supporters from his work on "Fritz the Cat" and the animated "Lord of the Rings," but his rotoscoping technique was ultimately dismissed by Frazetta, who felt the film should have more closely resembled his work. Rodriguez reckons he will be able to achieve that. "For Frazetta fans, this will be the ultimate tribute to what he did, and inspired so many people," said Rodriguez. "I think it’s going to be pretty powerful when people see it."
For those wondering, here's the trailer for Bakshi's "Fire and Ice."