Pack up yer bags and steady your stomachs, gorehounds — we're heading back to Hostel! After a jaunt into family-friendly horror fare with 2018's The House With A Clock In Its Walls, director Eli Roth returned to his bloody roots last year with splatter-filled slasher Thanksgiving. And now, with his hotly anticipated videogame adaptation Borderlands' summer release fast approaching, Roth is already hard at work on his next project — a small-screen take on the cult torture-porn franchise that secured his horror icon status. And did we mention the series will star The Holdovers' Paul Giamatti?
As first reported by THR, Paul Giamatti has closed a deal to star in Roth's TV take on the Hostel franchise, a modern adaptation of the films described as both an "elevated thriller" and also a "reinvention". Promisingly, the show — which will reunite co-writer and director Roth with Hostel collaborators Chris Briggs and Mike Fleiss — is coming from Fifth Season, the studio behind Apple TV+ show Severance. And whilst the original 2006 Hostel's two sequels may have wrought diminishing returns for Roth's grand guignol of guts and arterial spray, the franchise's original concept — a deeply disturbing deep-dive into a world where the bourgeois elite pay to torture and kill unsuspecting backpackers — is still more than fertile horror fodder.
And whilst an Eli Roth and Paul Giamatti collaboration may seem a little random, it's actually one that's been on the cards for some time. In a 2013 interview with EW, Giamatti, a self-professed horror fan, revealed he almost starred in the original Hostel. “Eli was shooting Hostel in Prague and I was shooting The Illusionist and I met him," Giamatti shared. "We talked about me actually killing somebody in that movie but it never panned out.” Whether Giamatti will be doing the killing or trying to avoid being killed in the new series, which is currently in development and seeking a platform, remains to be seen. But this being an Eli Roth joint, you can guarantee remains will most certainly be seen.