‘Danny Trejo’s Vengeance’ Looking For Slice Of Actor’s ‘Machete Kills’
EXCLUSIVE: Production company ITN is pulling out all the stops to promote Danny Trejo‘s upcoming film Danny Trejo’s Vengeance. In addition to the indie company releasing this month a tablet game Danny Trejo’s Vengeance: Woz With A Coz featuring Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to promote the movie, the plan is to use the eventual release date of Trejo’s Robert Rodriguez sequel Machete Kills as a sort of marketing partner. ITN is shopping Vengeance to rival exhibitors of Machete Kills‘ Open Road Films (a venture between big U.S. circuits AMC and Regal) at a discount, pitching them to open Vengeance three weeks before the eventual release date of Machete Kills. The idea is to draft on that pic’s marketing. We’re hearing the offer is to chains like Carmike and Cinemark for an 80-20 split — well beyond the usual 50-50 or 60-40 deals made for feature films.
If successful it would put two pics in the marketplace at once starring Trejo, the ex-con-turned-drug counselor who was discovered as a movie extra and now has 180-plus films to his credit. Vengeance stars the iconic tough guy as a retired undercover vice cop whose wife and daughter are murdered, and after a serving a jail sentence for a crime he didn’t commit he hits the streets bent on revenge. Medina, Trejo’s partner at ITN, directed. ITN is also in development on My Dog Zeus, Have You Considered?, and Jesus And Angelina: A Gangster Love Story.
Open Road has not set a date for Machete Kills, which it acquired last month. Trejo returns as an ex-Federale agent who is recruited by the U.S. president for a mission that would be impossible for any mortal man — he must take down a madman revolutionary and an eccentric billionaire arms dealer who has hatched a plan to spread war and anarchy across the planet. The first film in the planned trilogy grossed $26.6 million in 2010.
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