Watch A Badass Casey Jones Movie Pitch Reel From The Director Of Hobo With A Shotgun
There are some filmmakers that just effortlessly ooze cool, and Jason Eisener is absolutely one of those people. The Canadian creative first came to mainstream public consciousness after winning the "Grindhouse" fake trailer contest hosted by Robert Rodriguez and SXSW Festival, and his winning short, "Hobo with a Shotgun," led to a feature film of the same name starring Rutger Hauer. In the years that followed, Eisener has been involved in a slew of ridiculously rad projects, like the killer Christmas tree slasher, "Treevenge," serving as a producer on the well-loved "Turbo Kid," co-creating the Vice series "Dark Side of the Ring," and directing a segment of "V/H/S/2" that evolved into the genre-bending feature film, "Kids vs. Aliens."
If you want a film to have striking visuals, snappy dialogue, and a bleeding, beating heart of genre influences, you call Jason Eisener. This is why it makes complete sense that Eisner at one point was developing a feature film about one of the coolest characters in all of pop culture: Casey Jones of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" fame. Eisner took to Twitter today to share a tone reel of the project. "Five years ago I pitched a Casey Jones standalone film to Paramount with Shredder's daughter Karai as the heel," he wrote. "The final act saw Casey team up with Raphael who was [to] look like he stepped out of the 1990 film."
For the uninitiated, a tone reel is an assortment of existing and sometimes brand-new footage to help provide an example of the tone, style, and visual aesthetic a completed film will hope to emulate. Based on this tone reel, it's clear that Paramount missed out on something undeniably awesome.
Check out the Casey Jones tone reel
The tone reel Jason Eisener developed for this "Casey Jones" film is like a giant Easter egg hunt of all of the coolest movies ever made. Set to the song "I" by Black Sabbath (with Ronnie James Dio, of course), the tone reel boasts footage from films like "Lethal Weapon," "The Raid 2," "The Warriors," "Maniac Cop," past "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" films, a cornucopia of martial arts films, and even some shots from "Stranger Things" for good measure. The end result is a tone reel that elicits the fist-pumping "HELL YEAH" feeling any action movie worth its salt can inspire, and the burning question of, "Paramount ... why aren't you making this?!" To add insult to injury, Joe Manganiello ("True Blood," "Justice League") replied to Eisener by saying he told Paramount over a decade ago that he wanted to star in a "Casey Jones" film and that he would have done a project like his "in a heartbeat."
About ten years ago, Paramount wanted to make something with me and I said I wanted to play Casey Jones... I would have done this in a heartbeat
— JOE MANGANIELLO (@JoeManganiello) February 24, 2023
Casey Jones has been a fan-favorite character for decades, as the vigilante enacts his justice with more in-your-face violence than what our Turtle buds typically showcase. Not to mention, he's also got the coolest character design. Suddenly having an excuse to mass-produce Casey Jones masks feels like such a wasted opportunity from a business standpoint, especially considering Eisener would have absolutely made something that would have had every kid in the world wanting to be Casey Jones for Halloween.
But I guess we aren't allowed to have good things.