Production on writer/director Rob Zombie's 3 FROM HELL, a sequel to his earlier films HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, wrapped over a month ago, but for now the footage is sitting and waiting for Zombie and his editors to start cutting it together – and that's not going to happen for several more months.
Zombie is currently gearing up to hit the road with Marilyn Manson for a tour that will take them to venues throughout the United States and Canada. a tour that begins in mid-July and has dates through the end of August. It isn't until Zombie returns home from the tour that editing will begin on 3 FROM HELL.
The musician/filmmaker revealed this information during a recent appearance on the SiriusXM show Trunk Nation.
… basically, the process just stops and waits for me. 'Cause the film will just basically sit and wait till I get back from tour. …And then we'll start editing. And that'll take me through the rest of the year. …the editing will be five or six months, maybe. But I like it. I have a studio at my house, and we just bring the editors there and set up and we just sequester ourselves away. It's actually the same studio we make the records in; we just switch out the gear."
Although 3 FROM HELL was kept secret until it started filming, Zombie mentioned that the film
probably had two solid years of pre-production to get it going, 'cause getting these movies going sometimes feels close to impossible. And then the shoot is so fast."
He didn't go into detail on how he has brought the characters of Captain Spaulding, Otis, and Baby (played by Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie) back for this new film, since they appeared to have died at the end of THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, but he did discuss returning to the series after that not-so-definitive-after-all ending.
After the second one, I thought, 'We're done with it,' but I always think that with every movie. And then you kind of live with it for a long time, and the movies sort of take on a life of their own, or they start getting popular and the fans really start embracing them and the characters, and you start thinking, 'Well… Hmmm… What if I did this? What if I did that?' This one, it's 14 years in between the two films, so it's been a long time; it wasn't really a rush to make it, by any means."
The interview segments quoted above were transcribed by the folks over at Blabbermouth.net, who also mention that 3 FROM HELL is "tentatively due in early 2019".
Haig, Moseley, and Moon Zombie are joined in the cast by fellow returning REJECTS actors Danny Trejo and Daniel Roebuck, as well as new additions Richard Brake, Austin Stoker, Dee Wallace, Emilio Rivera, Jeff Daniel Phillips, David Ury, Tom Papa, Dot-Marie Jones, Pancho Moler, Richard Edson, Richard Riehle, Kevin Jackson, Billy Blair, Steven Michael Quezada, Bill Oberst Jr., Sylvia Jefferies, Sean Whalen, and Clint Howard (as a clown called Mr. Baggy Britches).
I'm still not entirely sold on 3 FROM HELL, because I thought THE DEVIL'S REJECTS had a perfect ending for its characters, but Moseley has tried to assuage any worries fans might have about the new film by calling it a mind-blowing masterpiece.