Eli Roth Offers Slight Update On Endangered Species

When he joined Quentin Tarantino and the cast of Inglourious Basterds at Cannes in May, Eli Roth announced the title of his next feature: Endangered Species. We've since learned that the film was jointly inspired by Cloverfield and Transformers, and that, very much in the vein of those two films, it'll be a big city-destruction film. We don't know anything about the antagonist(s), but aliens have been strongly hinted, with humans being the endangered species. He has said it will be "science fiction-based and with lots of chaos and mass destruction."

Now he's dropped a few small quotes about the film, which is gearing up to shoot in 2010.

Speaking to MTV, Roth said that Quentin Tarantino had given him some notes, based on which Roth will further develop the script. (Wikipedia actually says that Tarantino is writing the script, which is patently untrue.)

"Quentin actually loved the draft and had some really great suggestions, so I'm tweaking the script," Roth told MTV. "And I'm working out some visual effects tests, which is going to determine how I shoot it."

Which is kind of a non-update, because until the film is shooting he would be tweaking the script and doing effects tests as a matter of course. He also offered up some further non-revealing quotes with respect to casting:

"There are certain actors that I love and that I'd love to work with and certain people I have in mind. But it's easier for me to hone and finalize and get the script finished and then the method by which I'm going to shoot it and then the order, and then cast it."

Question is, will Roth still shoot Thanksgiving (his feature version of the trailer he did for Grindhouse) as an 18-day add-on to the Endangered Species shoot? That was his plan at Cannes, but one would guess that plan will be contingent upon financing — getting someone to pay for one movie these days is hard enough, but if he can keep the budget for Thanksgiving super-low (which would be appropriate to the film's '80s slasher homage tone anyway) perhaps he can make it happen.