Thanksgiving: Eli Roth celebrates birthday on slasher set, shares cast picture

Thanksgiving director Eli Roth took a picture with the cast of his slasher movie while celebrating his birthday this week

https://youtu.be/Nt1jyMSSDKk

Sixteen years after director Eli Roth contributed the faux slasher trailer Thanksgiving to the Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse, a feature expansion of the concept is currently in production. Roth celebrated his birthday on set earlier this week, and has taken to social media to share some pictures that were taken on the big day – including one that shows him surrounded by Thanksgiving cast members! Scroll through these images, past the shots of goat yoga and turkey cake, to see the cast:

Roth has been wanting to make a feature version of Thanksgiving ever since he put together the faux trailer. He even wrote the screenplay with Jeff Rendell (who played the homicidal pilgrim in the trailer) a dozen years ago. Now it’s finally happening, thanks to Spyglass Media stepping in to provide the funding. Roth jumped at the chance to get the movie made, even though it meant having Deadpool‘s Tim Miller take over as director on the reshoots for his 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 while Caellum Allan and Kelseigh Coombs will oversee for TriStar.

If you’ve watched the Thanksgiving trailer, you have a good idea of what this slasher movie is going to be about. The Hollywood Reporter says plot details are on the thin side although it concerns a slasher who comes to small Massachusetts town with the intention of “creating a Thanksgiving carving board out of the town’s inhabitants,” per sources. Which lines up with what we’ve seen in the faux trailer.

The film stars Addison Rae (He’s All That), Jalen Thomas Brooks (Walker), Nell Verlaque (Big Shot), Milo Manheim (Z-O-M-B-I-E-S), Gina Gershon (Bound), comedian Tim Dillon (who was in a TV show called Thanksgiving), Rick Hoffman (Hostel), Gabriel Davenport (Mistletoe Time Machine), Tomaso Sanelli (Titans), Jenna Warren (The Young Arsonists), and Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy). Character details are being kept under wraps, but we do know that Patrick Dempsey is playing the town sheriff.

TriStar Pictures and Spyglass Media Group are giving Thanksgiving a theatrical release on November 17, 2023 – the Friday before this Thanksgiving.

Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? I’ve been looking forward to this movie since 2007, so I’m very hyped that it’s finally filming and going to be released soon.

Thanksgiving Eli Roth

Source: Eli Roth

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.