This isn't something I ever expected to hear, but Robert Rodriguez has revealed that he is working on an animated series set in the world he and Quentin Tarantino created with their 1996 vampire classic From Dusk Till Dawn (watch it HERE).
About twenty years after the movie was released, Rodriguez returned to the concept with a television series that aired for three seasons on his El Rey Network. While the first season of the show was a remake of the film, seasons 2 and 3 went beyond the story of the first movie and dug deeper into the mythology of the snake-like vampires called Culebras (while disregarding the stories of From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money and From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter). When the series came to an end, I was left wanting more From Dusk Till Dawn – and El Rey Network left the door open to more, they just weren't sure how they were going to proceed.
Rodriguez recently sat down for an interview with SFX Magazine, and during that interview he gave them the scoop that he has figured out that the future of From Dusk Till Dawn is animated.
First, he told them how the From Dusk Till Dawn TV show happened in the first place:
Over here, I have my own television network [El Rey]. So I had a television network here. And I needed to create programming, so Quentin [Tarantino] and I still control the rights to it. So I went, 'Oh, wow, I'd love to expand the story of Santánico Pandemonium, and the whole Aztec vampire lore for my network. And then internationally it was just put out as a Netflix original, I think is probably how you saw it. But here it was an original series for my television network, action television network called El Rey, which is, you know, the place they're trying to get to at the end of Dusk till Dawn so it fits perfectly [laughs]. That was originally why we did it, so we did three seasons of that."
Then he dropped the bombshell:
And now we're looking towards, we're developing an animated Dusk till Dawn. You’re the first person to hear that!"
He went on to confirm that the animated series
will follow in the footsteps of the live-action show and further explore the world of Aztec vampires."
I hope we'll be catching up with the characters from the live-action show in the animated series, with the actors who played them on the previous show providing their voices in the new series. While we wait to hear further details, right now I'm just happy to know that the From Dusk Till Dawn franchise is going to continue.
El Rey Network went off the airwaves at the end of 2020, but Rodriguez has said El Rey is just moving on to its "next phase". Like the live-action From Dusk Till Dawn show got the TV network started, it sounds like the animated show will be used to get viewers interested in whatever the new iteration of El Rey is going to be.