Danny Trejo is one of the busiest and most recognizable character actors in the business, having made roughly 250 film and television appearances over the course of his career, including twelve in 2018 alone. Best known for having a face that looks like it was carved out of granite, the actor has quite happily been typecast for decades, and very rarely gets the chance to play the leading man.
One of the few times Trejo got to take center stage though was in the Machete franchise, which originated from a fake trailer made to play in front of the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino double-feature Grindhouse. The concept proved so popular that it spawned two movies, with sequel Machete Kills ending on the tease of a third adventure that would head into sci-fi territory with the fantastic title of Machete Kills Again… in Space.
Six years have passed since then, and the third installment is no closer to heading in front of cameras. The 75 year-old isn’t getting any younger, either, and admitted in a recent interview that if Rodriguez was too busy to direct the movie then he might just do it himself.
“You know what, everybody in the world wants that. I keep telling Robert, and you know, it’s all bogged down in bullsh*t, so I might do it. Yeah. I might just produce it and do it, if he don’t get off his buns!”
Trejo seems to somewhat overestimate the popularity of Machete by claiming that everybody wants to see a third movie. The first entry did decent enough business at the box office, earning over four times what it cost to make, but Machete Kills bombed hard and failed to even recoup its $20m budget. Regardless, this hasn’t stopped him from thinking about just making the thing himself.
“Everybody wants this, I mean, everybody in the world. I’ve been asked that all over the world. ‘Hey, are you going to do Machete in Space?’. It was the biggest thing in the world for a while. I mean, you got endless movies doing number six, number seven, number eight. And Machete had a great story to it, you know what I mean? I might try to figure out how to do that myself. If I could do a movie, I would direct Machete.”
The two Machete movies are undeniable cult favorites, but at this point, the chances of seeing Machete Kills Again… In Space actually getting made are increasingly unlikely. Which is a shame, because there’s no doubt the movie would be completely insane. After all, the previous two flicks boasted one of the most mind-boggling collection of actors ever assembled that included Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga, Mel Gibson, Elon Musk and Charlie Sheen as the President of the United States.