The Hollywood Reporter has described the Hostel TV show as a “present-day take on the concept” as well as an “elevated thriller” that serves as a “reinvention” of the franchise. Roth is set to write, direct, and executive produce the series with the films’ original producers Mike Fleiss and Chris Briggs also on board. Roth’s two Hostel films followed young, pleasure-seeking American tourists who are lured into the clutches of a Slovakian criminal organization that offer sadists the chance to torture and kill innocent victims for money. (A third entry to the franchise, made without Roth’s involvement, was released straight-to-video in 2011). The A.V. Club‘s Scott Tobias noted the influence of Japanese director Takashi Miike on the original Hostel, writing that Roth “studiously replicates Miike’s unblinking depiction of torture, but without much reflection or wit. It’s merely unpleasant and more than a little dumb.” However, reviewing the second film in 2007, Tobias wrote, “To dismiss the Hostel movies as thoughtless ‘torture porn’ of the Saw variety doesn’t do justice to the sophistication behind them, even if that sophistication is undermined on occasion by dumb juvenilia.”
Few working actors can boast a career like Paul Giamatti, who went from his Oscar-nominated lead role in The Holdovers to a supporting role in the new Downton Abbey movie to a member of the ensemble of a new Star Trek show. Last year, he told Variety he’d love to do more horror as a big fan of the genre. Hostel is apparently a perfect vehicle to make this dream come true, as the original 2006 film also introduced him to Roth in the first place: “Eli was shooting Hostel in Prague and I was shooting The Illusionist and I met him,” Giamatti told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “We talked about me actually killing somebody in that movie but it never panned out.” Now, it seems it shall pan out after all.
