Sony is bringing Eli Roth’s long-awaited slasher Thanksgiving (read our review HERE, check out our interview with Roth at THIS LINK) back to theatre screens, and they’re not waiting for the Thanksgiving holiday to do it. Our friends at Bloody Disgusting report that Thanksgiving, which was just released to theatres for the first time back in November, will be returning to more than 500 theatres (the count is 511, to be exact) this weekend. The movie already received a digital release last week, so presumably this theatrical boost is meant to promote Blu-ray and DVD release that’s coming on January 30th.
Thanksgiving is a feature expansion of the faux trailer Roth made for the Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse sixteen years ago. Roth has been wanting to make a feature version of Thanksgiving ever since he made the faux trailer, and even wrote the screenplay with Jeff Rendell (who played the homicidal pilgrim in the trailer) a dozen years ago. The feature has happened 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 produced 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 oversaw the project for Spyglass while Caellum Allan and Kelseigh Coombs oversaw for TriStar.
If you’ve watched the original Thanksgiving trailer, you have a good idea of what this slasher movie is going to be about, but here’s the synopsis: After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the infamous holiday.
The film stars Nell Verlaque (Big Shot), Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy), Addison Rae (He’s All That), Jalen Thomas Brooks (Walker), 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), and Jenna Warren (The Young Arsonists).
I had been looking forward to Thanksgiving ever since seeing the faux trailer with Grindhouse, and I loved the finished film. I won’t be catching a theatrical screening this weekend, but I am very glad to know we have a sequel coming in 2025, and will definitely be adding a physical media copy to my collection.
What do you think of Thanksgiving returning to theatres this weekend? Let us know by leaving a comment below.