Academy Award nominee and lifelong horror fan Paul Giamatti is set to star in a key role for new “Hostel” TV series with Eli Roth returning, THR reports today.
It’s not just Roth returning, but franchise producers Chris Briggs and Mike Fleiss as well.
No plot details as of yet as the series is still in development. But it’s described as a “modern adaptation” and an “elevated thriller” that’s also a “reinvention” of the horror franchise that launched in 2006 and spawned two sequels.
Roth and Briggs will write the script, with the former set to direct. Roth, Briggs and Fleiss will all executive produce the series.
Giamatti will star in a key role, though character details are under wraps.
The actor is a huge fan of the genre, having recently appeared as the villainous Christian Barbrow in season two of HBO Original Series “30 Coins.” Giamatti recently chatted with Bloody Disgusting about both his role and his love of genre storytelling.
Giamatti is also a longtime fan of the Hostel films, apparently. “Eli was shooting Hostel in Prague and I was shooting The Illusionist and I met him. We talked about me actually killing somebody in that movie but it never panned out,” Giamatti told EW in a 2013 interview.
Released in 2005, Hostel was set in a world where the rich can pay to literally torture and murder captured victims, and Eli Roth returned to direct Hostel: Part II in 2007. The film did spawn second sequel Hostel: Part III in 2011, but Scott Spiegel took over as director.
Perhaps the news shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise, considering Roth previously expressed great interest in returning to the gruesome world of Hostel. When promoting recent slasher Thanksgiving, the filmmaker said in an interview with Cinepop, “I’d love to go back to Hostel at some point. And Cabin Fever as well. They’re like my children.”
“I feel like I’ve ignored them for too long,” Roth continued. “And I’d love to go back to them in some way. I have ideas. I would direct it. I don’t want it in anyone else’s hands.”
