Tag: Robert Rodriguez

From Dusk Till Dawn — The Series: TV Review

The good news is that Robert Rodriguez’s cult hit movie, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, is being made into a TV series.

The bad news is that TVWriter™ hasn’t had a shot at seeing the pilot yet.

But don’t despair, brothers and sisters, The Hollywood Reporter has: read article

Why Robert Rodriguez Is Hating On Sony TV

Nikki Finke doesn’t write all that often anymore, but when she does…well, hell, kids, let’s just say that nobody bashes like she does:

by Nikki Finke

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline reported this week that Sony TV just announced it will produce an El Mariachi series based on the 1992 Robert Rodriguez film. Now I’ve learned that Robert Rodriguez and his reps are really pissed about it. I’m told that Sony TV execs reached out to Rodriguez only once to say that they were “thinking” about doing a TV show based on the writer/director’s trilogy ofEl Mariachi/Desperado/Once Upon A Time In Mexico characters.

“After that they stopped returning our calls. So we thought that this had been abandoned,” one of RR’s insiders tells me. “Not only does Robert not have any involvement in this show, he wasn’t even given a ‘head’s up’ on Sony’s press release. In it we noticed that Sony mentioned something about ‘staying true to the original story’. Good luck with that without involving the creator! Not that it matters as the budget that’s allocated for the television production will make  Robert’s original budget of $7,000 for El Mariachi look like Avatar. This TV  series is a sloppy and lazy replica for the tourist trade, without any of the heart and soul that made the original El Mariachi win the Sundance Audience Award and become a landmark in independent cinema.”

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 5/18/13

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are

  • Tom Fontana (HOMICIDE) is developing a limited series about everybody’s favorite gunslinger, BILLY THE KID, for Fox. (Which means it might actually be about more than the shootin’ but the shootin’ definitely will be there.)
  • Robert Rodriguez (SPY KIDS) is turning his and Quentin Tarantino’s 1996 feature film FROM DUSK TO DAWN into a series for the new El Ray Network, co-founded by Rodriguez with Univision. (Yes, the station will be English-language, which is too bad in the case of the its other commissioned series, which will be written by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci (STAR TREK et al), AKA the two luckiest writers on the face of the earth.)
  • Tad Quill (SCRUBS, SPIN CITY) has a new overall deal with CBS to write, produce and generally raise creative havoc. (His first assignment is on a new series called WE ARE MEN, about friends living in Oakwood Gardens…where some genuine creativity definitely is needed.)
  • Aron Eli Coleite (HEROES) is rewriting the CW’s attempt to get a new Wonder Woman series off the ground. (This one’s called AMAZON and considering how badly all attempts to re-boot WW have gone, it’s pretty likely that none of us will ever see it on the air.)
  • Josh Friedman (THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) will be a writer-producer on NBC’s upcoming pirate “drama,” CROSSBONES as part of a new overall deal at Universal Television. (Where they love to apply big holding deal salaries to shows already bulging with capable staffs. Hey, it’s the way they do business, you know?)