Director Eli Roth’s much-anticipated slasher film, “Thanksgiving,” is set to hit theaters on November 17th, just before the holiday itself. The film features a killer with a mask inspired by John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth colony. In a newly released trailer, Roth and cast members Nell Verlaque (“Big Shot”) and Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy”) build up the legend of this new John Carver in quick interview snippets, intercut with new footage from the film.

“Thanksgiving” is an expansion of the faux trailer Roth created for the Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino double feature “Grindhouse” sixteen years ago. Roth has long aspired to make a feature version of “Thanksgiving,” having written the screenplay with Jeff Rendell, who played the homicidal pilgrim in the trailer, a dozen years ago. Spyglass Media provided the funding for the feature, and Roth gladly seized the opportunity to bring the film to life, even with Deadpool’s Tim Miller taking over as director for the reshoots of Roth’s video game adaptation, “Borderlands.”

Roth and Rendell are producing the film with Roger Birnbaum. Spyglass chairman and CEO Gary Barber and president of production Peter Oillataguerre serve as executive producers, alongside Kate Harrison and Greg Denny of Cream Productions Inc. Oillataguerre and SVP Production & Development Chris Stone are overseeing the project for Spyglass, with Caellum Allan and Kelseigh Coombs overseeing for TriStar.

The film’s synopsis reads: “After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the infamous holiday.”

The cast includes Nell Verlaque, Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Gina Gershon, Tim Dillon, Rick Hoffman, Gabriel Davenport, Tomaso Sanelli, and Jenna Warren. While character details have been kept under wraps, Patrick Dempsey is playing the town sheriff.

Roth explained in an interview that he considers this movie a “reboot” of the non-existent film he made the faux trailer for, stating, “We were trying to get the script right. For years, I was just connecting the dots between the trailer, and then I was like, ‘Am I just filming the scenes in between what I already did before?’ The big revelation was, (Jeff Rendell) said, ‘I have to just pretend that Thanksgiving 1980 exists and that it was so offensive that every print was destroyed, and the only thing that survived was the trailer. This is the reboot of what that movie was. Every copy of the script was burned. Every print was burned. The only thing that survived was that one trailer, on the darkest corners of the internet. So, we have to make a movie based on that. This is the reboot of what that was.’ That freed me up creatively to go, ‘I can use a couple of my favorite things in the trailer, but I don’t have to worry about recreating the trailer.’ That trailer was for a movie where every print was destroyed. Now, this is gonna be its own thing.”

Are you eagerly anticipating “Thanksgiving”? What are your thoughts on the new “The Legend of John Carver” trailer? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

SOURCE:AH