Machete's Crazy Cast Confirmed: De Niro, Lohan, Seagal And More

Not too long ago there were rumors that Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis were looking at some outrageous names for Machete, the full-length version of the great Grindhouse trailer starring Danny Trejo. We basically knew that Lindsay Lohan was confirmed after she said as much the other day via Twitter. But now a Variety report on Overnight Productions, the outfit financing Machete, seems to confirm most of the great cast rumors. Details after the jump.

The report says "Danny Trejo is playing the title character and Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and Jeff Fahey play supporting roles." That's a crazy lineup, but not really surprising. De Niro worked with Tarantino, pal of Rodriguez, after all, so he's not as left-field as you'd first think. But getting Seagal to do a movie he's not toplining always seems like an uphill battle, so that is a bit of a surprise. It's also fairly cool; if you're going to put Seagal in anything at this point, a b-movie like Machete is dead-on perfect. And I'll admit that I'm curious about what Rodriguez and Maniquis can get out of Don Johnson. The rumored cast member who isn't here is Jonah Hill, who'd been reading the script not too long ago, but the word had been that he'd passed on it, so his absence isn't a big surprise.

Machete started production this week and should be done pretty quickly. Rodriguez likes his productions to shoot fast, and so the film should be in the can by mid-September at the latest. That means we'll be seeing some photos real soon. After that Rodriguez should be quickly pushing forward with Predators. We still don't know too much about that project, though at Comic-Con, the filmmaker said that Fox had given him total creative freedom, and that the effects would be handled by KNB, the outfit that has done FX for so many of his films.