multi-hyphenate moviemaker Robert Rodriguez announced that he has plans for a new installment in his acclaimed, commercially successful family film series Spy Kids.

BY TODD GILCHRIST
Saturday morning during a press conference for Predators in Austin, TX, multi-hyphenate moviemaker Robert Rodriguez announced that he has plans for a new installment in his acclaimed, commercially successful family film series Spy Kids. “I’m actually doing another Spy Kids for The Weinsteins,” he said to members of the press. “That is a new version with new kids and it’s actually pretty cool. That’s probably what I’m going to do right next.”

Although Rodriguez calls Austin home, even stationing his Troublemaker studios in the film-friendly town, the filmmaker was conducting interviews on behalf of a producing project, a sequel-cum-franchise reboot of the alien action series entitled Predators. When asked about the prospect of rebooting his own series, he laughed. “It’s funny,” he said. “It’s like I can go do someone else’s franchise that I don’t own, [but] when I had the idea for this I thought, ‘That’s kind of cool. It’s about 10 years later.’”

Rodriguez said that another installment was an easy decision given the loyalty fans of the previous films have shown him. “That’s my most loyal audience,” Rodriguez observed. “More than the geek crowd are the kids. Every day kids and families come up and say. ‘Thanks for Spy Kids. We’re showing our new kids that.’ So I thought let’s revitalize it with an amazing cast and new kids. That sounds not as good as probably it really is but when you read the script, it actually is. It didn’t sound like we were going back to the well for the fourth time. This actually feels completely new.”

Rodriguez admitted that part of the reason he was so pumped to make the movie was because he just finished the script, and indicated that the film would be markedly different from the earlier films. “I just turned it in so that’s why I’m so excited about it,” he said. “It’s going to be more like the first ones. It’d be very practical, very realistic. It’s like the Casino Royale to For Your Eyes Only. The other movies were the For Your Eyes Onlys. I love For Your Eyes Only, the Roger Moore James Bonds. [But] this is the Casino Royale.”