‘Thanksgiving’ Red Band Trailer: Eli Roth’s Serial Killer Pilgrim Feasts on Plymouth Townies

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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This Thanksgiving, there will be no leftover victims.

Eli Roth’s long-awaited “Thanksgiving” is a holiday-set slasher, with a masked pilgrim terrorizing the residents of Plymouth, Massachusetts years after a Black Friday riot ended in tragedy.

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Patrick Dempsey stars as the local police officer investigating the slew of killings, including a woman being baked alive in an oven. Addison Rae, Gina Gershon, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, and Rick Hoffman also star.

“Thanksgiving” is co-written and directed by Roth, who previously created a mock trailer for the film to lead into Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” in 2007. Roth told Collider that there were “rights issues” for the film, as well as pressure to get the tone 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 it?'” Roth said. “[Co-writer] Jeff Rendell and I just went through every iteration. I’ll tell you, the big revelation was, he 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.”

The 18-day shoot for “Thanksgiving” was akin to Roth’s “Cabin Fever” and “Hostel,” according to the director, “where it’s an R-rated movie that’s being released in movie theaters by a mainstream studio, but it’s still totally bonkers.”

Roth teased, “I want everyone screaming and going, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe they did that.’ It’s that kind of movie, but it’s also not gonna be in the way you’d expect. You want to outdo what you did in the fake trailer, but hit people in ways that they don’t see coming. That’s the trick.”

Roth also told Empire magazine that his goal was to have “Thanksgiving” include “as many kills as possible” – and not just the turkey.

In addition to “Thanksgiving,” Roth is co-directing the “Borderlands” video game adaptation with “The Last of Us” showrunner Craig Mazin. “Deadpool” helmer Tim Miller took over two weeks of reshoots that overlapped with Roth’s “Thanksgiving” production in January, as Deadline reported. “Borderlands” also stars “Thanksgiving” actress Gershon, as well as Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kevin Hart.

Spyglass produces “Thanksgiving,” along with writer-director Roth and Roger Birnbaum.

“Thanksgiving” premieres November 17 in theaters from TriStar Pictures. Check out the red band trailer below.

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