At the SXSW Festival Tuesday night, writer, producer, director (is there anything he doesn’t do?) Robert Rodriguez entertained the audience with music from Chingon (in which he plays guitar) and some exciting announcements of what’s to come.

One of the big news is that Rodriguez is launching a new animation company called Quickdraw Animation. The company will be its own entity and will be devoted to making CG-animated feature films. According to Rodriguez, there will be a core group of 6-8 animators that will be based in-house at his Troublemaker Studios to mastermind all the story and visual elements then the project will be outsourced to sister companies for the actual animation to be finished.  Rodriguez has also said that his company will be able to produce animated films in less time that it takes now. Normally, it would take 2-3 years to get an animated movie onto the big screen and although he didn’t go into detail as to how he would be able to shorten the process, it will be very interesting to see his timeline.

One of the animated films that he is already working on is ‘Heavy Metal.’ Whether his version of ‘Heavy Metal’ will be a remake, reboot or even a sequel to the original was not mentioned. What he did say was that the film already has a finished script and is moving into the storyboard pre-production phase. Originally Rodriguez was planning on a live version of the movie so the change is a surprising one. The original ‘Heavy Metal’ film was an animated movie that was loosely based on the French magazine ‘Heavy Metal’ and featured short vignettes that covered dark fantasy, eroticism, and horror all told by a glowing green orb as it terrorizes a young girl. The movie has become a cult favorite not only for its content but also for its soundtrack. A sequel was released in 2000 but never reached the status of its predecessor.

Another big announcement that Rodriguez made was that the long awaited sequel to his big hit ‘Sin City’ will finally start production in the summer. He didn’t state who would be starring in ‘Sin City 2’ but did hint that the potential stars who would be in the film would be of the same caliber as the first. If you recall, Jessica Alba, Benecio del Toro, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood among others all starred in ‘Sin City.’

As wonderful as this news is, the rumors of ‘Sin City 2’ have been going since the original came out in 2005. That’s 7 years folks! It’s already been said that the plot of the sequel will involve three stories from Frank Miller so after all these years of development, one can only hope that the sequel lives up to the expectations.

So it looks like Rodriguez has enough to keep him busy for a while. What do you think of the news of a new ‘Heavy Metal’ and the start of ‘Sin City 2?’ Let me know in the comments below!

Source: THR