It’s official: Paul Giamatti to star in Eli Roth’s Hostel TV series!

UPDATE: A month after the Paul Giamatti / Hostel TV series rumor popped up, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that it’s actually happening! Giamatti is set to play “a key role” in the Hostel TV show, which is said to reinvent the franchise as an “elevated thriller.” The series is coming our way from Fifth Season, the studio behind Apple’s Severance, and has Eli Roth, Chris Briggs, and Mike Fleiss on board as executive producers. Roth and Briggs are also writing the project, which Roth will be directing.

In 2013, Giamatti revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he almost made a cameo in the original Hostel: “Eli was shooting Hostel in Prague and I was shooting The Illusionist and I met him. We talked about me actually killing somebody in that movie but it never panned out.” Now it looks like Giamatti and Roth are going to make up for lost time.

The original article follows:

It’s good to be Paul Giamatti. With seven years of Showtime’s Billions under his belt, and a fresh Oscar nomination for The Holdovers in his rearview mirror, the legendary character actor can seemingly have his pick of any role he wants on the big or small screen. According to a scoop by notorious Hollywood tipster Daniel Richtman, he may have just chosen the most unlikely follow-up of all time: a TV version of Eli Roth’s Hostel from the controversial horror auteur himself.

While this might sound outrageous to some, Giamatti has been very open about his love of the genre, noting that he wants to add more horror to his filmography. He’s always carved out time in his schedule to be in genre stuff like the series 30 Coins, the movies Morgan, John Dies at the End, Gunpowder Milkshake, Shoot ’em Up, and more. He also noted that one of his favorite roles of all time was as the ape Limbo in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. With his love of the genre, he might be taking the opportunity to step it up a bit in a series that could put him in the pantheon of horror greats, especially if he’s teaming with Eli Roth.

A Hostel TV show actually sounds like a nifty idea. While it’s unlikely it would be as heavy as the first two movies, which pushed the envelope regarding screen violence, the premise was always compelling. In it, young backpackers are lured to a Hostel where they are tortured to death by sadistic wealthy folk. With the income gap increasing more and more each year, this could prove to be fertile ground for a long-form TV project. I could see Giamatti in a number of potential roles. He could play a sadistic rich person torturing travellers, or he could play one of the people running the hostel. He could also play a more reluctant participant or even a good guy trying to shut the hostel down. Heck, he could even play a torture victim himself. Any of these roles would suit him – although my suspicion is that if Giamatti is doing horror, he’s gonna want to play a REAL bad guy. Preferably one with a menacing accent.

Does a Hostel TV show with Giamatti and Roth sound promising? Let us know in the comments!