Magnet Releasing has picked up U.S. distribution rights to the genre flick Hobo With a Shotgun. The company plans a release in 2011. The film, which stars Rutger Hauer as a homeless vigilante in an exploitation workout, will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month as part of the Park City at Midnight section. Jason Eisener, who screened a short film at the festival in 2009, directed the feature project. The helmer won a contest at the SXSW film festival to create an original trailer like those featured in the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse, and he then expanded it into this full-length feature. As a throwback exercise in grindhouse gore, the movie features Hauer as a drifter who wanders into a crime-ridden town, decides he’s had enough and takes after the local crime boss with a shotgun. “Pure blood-drunk, bat-shit-crazy fun,” said Magnet exec Tom Quinn.
“A train pulls into its final station and a Hobo hops from a freight car. He has dreams of a fresh life in a new city, but finds himself trapped in an urban hell instead. A city where criminals rule the streets, landlords evict single mothers in the middle of the night, and where the city’s crime boss, The Drake, reigns supreme with his sadistic, homeless-killing sons, Slick & Ivan. Through the chaos, the Hobo comes across a shop window displaying a second hand lawn mower and a shotgun, and decides it’s time to cut the grass, make the city beautiful and start a new way of life. But after witnessing the brutality that encompasses this city, he realizes the only way to make a difference in this place is with a gun in his hand and two shells in its chamber.”