Thanksgiving’s Eli Roth on how his fake Tarantino trailer became a 2023 ‘reboot’

There’s no denying that we’re living in the era of reboots and legacy sequels when it comes to the movie industry, particularly when it comes to horror. Just this year, we’ve seen the release of Saw X, which centers Tobin Bell’s John Kramer, and The Exorcist: Believer, a spiritual continuation of William Friedkin’s 1973 original.

It’s no surprise, then, that Eli Roth used the trend as a way in to Thanksgiving – even though it technically doesn’t have a feature-length predecessor. Instead, the blood-soaked new slasher takes inspiration from a fake trailer he made back in the mid 2000s, which was attached to Quentin Tarantino’s Planet Terror-Death Proof double bill, often jointly titled ‘Grindhouse’.

“It’s just so nuts and so fun and goes so far into the boundaries of bad taste. How do you extend that for 90 minutes, and still make a real movie?” he explains to Total Film magazine in the new issue, which hits newsstands on Thursday, October 12 and features Ridley Scott on the cover.

“We said, ‘Let’s pretend Thanksgiving was a movie from 1980 that was so offensive that every print was destroyed. All the scripts were burned,” Roth continues. “The director disappeared. The crew members changed their names. One person saved the trailer and uploaded it to the darkest corners of 4chan, and now it’s made it out. So this is a 2023 reboot.’ Once we said that, it freed us up.”

Starring Gina Gershon, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, and Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey, Thanksgiving sees a Massachusetts town terrorized by a masked killer dubbed “John Carver”, who you can get a good look at in our exclusive image above, after a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy. The murderer’s mission? To make a festive feast out of his victims.

Made for $100,000 in just two days back in 2007, Roth’s initital Thanksgiving trailer left horror fans delighted and appalled in equal measure, but the filmmaker – whose previous works include The Green Inferno, Knock Knock, and Cabin Fever (2002) – promises he’s updated the material to work for a modern-day audience. Though it won’t be tame, by any means…

“It’s going to have different connotations in 2023,” he says. “Look, I’ve been the guy that made something that was offensive and exploitative for the sake of being shocking. I’ve had that experience. So I wanted to make a movie that was fun for everybody. The trick, for me, was to come up with: ‘What is shocking in a different way?’ I don’t want anyone to think my work is sanitized, because it’s certainly not. But how can I surprise people, and be distasteful and offensive in a way they don’t see coming? And I think that we did it.”

Thanksgiving opens in cinemas on November 17. While we wait, for more from our chat with Roth, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, October 12. Check out the covers below:

(Image credit: Scott Council/Total Film)

Pre-order the issue here to bag your copy, or click here to subscribe to Total Film and never miss another exclusive. With our latest offer, you can get a JOBY Magnetic Wireless Charger worth £29.95 when you take out a print/bundle subscription. You’ll also get exclusive subscriber-only covers (like the one on the right, above).

(Image credit: Future)