With the series starting on March 11th, Robert Rodriguez (‘Sin City’, ‘Planet Terror’) recently sat down and gave a lot of details about his new show ‘From Dusk Till Dawn‘. The key element that many fans are going to love hearing is that there is going to be a whole lot more vampire mythology in this series than has ever been even remotely touched upon or hinted at in the films. I’ve almost always been a fan of Rodriguez’ work and ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ has been what I’ve often considered a guilty pleasure film.

The 13-episode first season appears to share the same tones that the original film did and as long as it doesn’t follow in the footsteps of the sequels, we should be in for a fun ride. With some of the early shots reflecting what worked in both Rodriguez and Tarantino’s early works, I think he’s got the right focus in mind. For the record, Tarantino is not involved in the project.

In an interview with Collider, while opening up about the vampire mythology we’ll be experiencing, Rodriguez also gave us quite a bit more on what to expect with ‘From Dusk to Dawn’. So let’s take a look at what he had to say! First, this series almost didn’t even happen as Rodriguez wasn’t sure he wanted to get into television. That is, until he had a great idea on where to go with the series:

“I was looking forward to the challenge of it. Someone had actually asked about doing From Dusk Till Dawn before I had the network, and I said, ‘No, Quentin and I control the rights to it. We really wouldn’t want to do it for television, unless at least one of us was heavily involved.’ And I didn’t myself getting into television, at that time. But then, I thought of a way to do. The whole season takes place from dusk until dawn, and we retold the original story with the Gecko brothers and Santanico. In the original film, when I first read the script, it didn’t really take Mexico into account, so I added into the original movie, things that I researched about Aztec cultures and mythologies. I found a blood cult that worships snakes and I included that in the film. And the last shot of the hinted at a larger mythology.”

It’s the very endcap of the first film that we always wanted more of, so Rodriguez has brought that to the series. We’ll finally get and idea of where the vampires came from and the basis of the cult that he had found out about when he was doing research about the temple from the end of the movie:

“So, I always thought that was a cool idea that we didn’t get to explore further in the film because it just wasn’t written that way, but I left it there, just to tickle people’s imagination about what it could be. And now, years and years later, when I have the El Rey Network, I thought that would be a great first show to do that would be a known title to lead people to the network and show them what the network was about, but also give a chance to re-explore some of those ideas that I had researched, way back in the first film, and expand Quentin’s story to include new characters, new trajectories and new storylines for the original characters, and really build that mythology up more with the Santanico cult, so that we could follow that in more seasons, later on. “

While we’re getting a revisit with Tarantinos’s characters, he did have to find a way to write them without the original creator involved:

“So, the challenge was really finding a new writing team, and me writing the original script to the first episode to show how it would be expanded, so that they could emulate that style for other episodes. It was just a lot of fun. Quentin writes the best characters, so to take those characters and expand on them and see where else they could have gone or come from, was really, really exciting and fun to work with. That’s what drew a lot of our cast, as well was just getting the chance to play Quentin Tarantino characters in a television series, which has never been done before.”

It’ll be interesting to see how they are expanded upon to give us a new look at these characters while still paying tribute to what we’ve already seen.

This is a series that really could work well on the small screen with plenty of avenues to follow and make it interesting for seasons to come. Do you think Rodriguez can pull it off? Do you have The El Rey Network to even be able to see it? Share your thoughts below!

Synopsis:

The network’s first scripted original on Robert Rodriguez’s new genre-busting cable network, the series is based on the thrill-ride film of the same name. The 10-episode serialized drama is centered around bank robber, Seth Gecko and his violent, unpredictable brother, Richard “Richie” Gecko, who are wanted by the FBI and Texas Rangers Earl McGraw and Freddie Gonzalez after a bank heist left several people dead. While on the run to Mexico, Seth and Richie encounter former pastor Jacob Fuller and his family, whom they take hostage. Using the family RV to cross the border, chaos ensues when the group detours to a strip club that is populated by vampires. They are forced to fight until dawn in order to get out alive.