Robert Rodriguez brings another bumper crop of sequel and remake announcements to Comic-Con

By Sean O'Neal | July 22, 2011 | 3:50pm

Aux Features Film

Robert Rodriguez may have arrived at Comic-Con to let everyone get a whiff of Spy Kids 4: All The Gimmicks In The World, but as with most Comic-Con guests, nobody really wants to hear them talk about the thing they’re actually there to promote. Fortunately, Rodriguez obliged by bringing along a big ol' basket of freshly picked new projects, all of which are either sequels to his own or remakes of other people’s popular movies, which is exactly the kind of announcement that a) Robert Rodriguez always makes, and b) tends to be big Comic-Con news. First up: The long-rumored Sin City 2, which Rodriguez says could begin shooting—in 3-D, naturally—as early as this year from an already-completed script by Frank Miller. The director says he’s also close to making his Machete follow-up, Machete Kills, followed soon thereafter by Machete Kills Again, with the latter reportedly being set in space (thereby jumping the gun on the Leprechaun rule of sequels by one whole movie).

But Rodriguez plans to do more than just replicate his own movies: The other big news is that he is now attached to the long-gestating, modern adaptation of Heavy Metal magazine, an update of 1981’s barbarians-and-boobs and cyborgs-and-Corvettes (and boobs) animated feature that Rodriguez plans to film as an anthology with different directors—which means that the other filmmakers like James Cameron, David Fincher, and Zack Snyder who have also tried to remake Heavy Metal over the years may still have a shot. And along those same lines, Rodriguez confirmed those reports from last year that he still plans on doing a live-action remake of Frank Frazetta and Ralph Bakshi’s custom-van epic Fire And Ice. Although, anyone who has followed Robert Rodriguez over the years knows that whenever the dude is given a microphone, he just starts rattling off potential projects like a nervous tic, so don’t necessarily count on any of these being made until you see the stylized trailer.