Director Robert Rodriguez has been keeping himself extremely busy over the last decade with his kid films on Netflix such as the recently released “Spy Kids” reboot “Spy Kids: Armageddon,” tackling the “Star Wars” universe with “The Mandalorian” and his own spinoff series “The Book of Boba Fett,” the Ben Affleck thriller “Hypnotic,” and had worked with James Cameron by helming his ambitious cyberpunk adventure pic “Alita: Battle Angel,” a live-action adaptation of the popular Japanese manga series.

During a recent chat with The Wrap, Rodriguez states that he would be interested in returning to his El franchise, which consists of “El Mariachi,” “Desperado,” and “Once Upon A Time In Mexico.” That action-packed trilogy focused on a gun-toting Mexican folk hero, a former musician, going up drug cartels and corrupt military leaders. However, the director is a bit uncomfortable with the idea of glorifying gun violence given the current climate of shootings and other real-life violence connected to the cartels.

“I would love to revisit the ‘Desperado’ series. I thought it was way ahead of its time. It’s really hard to do today, for me, anything with guns. Gun violence has gotten out of control. Even those are those are very tongue-in-cheek and kind of fun. It’s just hard to do. There’s always some terrible shooting and you just go, I don’t know if I can responsibly do anything with guns. I really love those films, they are so fun. They’re like ‘Spy Kids’ for grownups, with guitar cases that fired missiles and gadgets galore. It was still made by a kid. Still, the glorification of it would be hard for me to pull off responsibly.”

There is certainly some shared DNA between those fun shoot-em-up films and the four “John Wick” movies from Chad Stahelski, they both make a point to establish they’re not set in a grounded cinematic universe. Something that “Once Upon A Time In Mexico” fully leans into as it comes off more like an action film mixed with a fairytale with over-the-top characters and ridiculous plot points. Not unlike his two extremely violent “Machete” films that are glorious love letters to the exploitation genre.

Speaking of Machete, we’re still waiting on Rodriguez to round out his trilogy with “Machete In Space.”

There was also a brief update/comment on the status of the “Battle Angel” sequel. While there haven’t been any formal announcements from Disney/20th Century Studios concerning “Alita 2,” Rodriguez reiterates that he’s still been keeping in contact with Cameron about the potential sequel and is hopeful that the studio is willing to make it as post-acquisition 20th Century is making more of their own movies again.

“Yeah, Jim and I always talk about how we’d love to do another ‘Alita.’ That studio [20th Century] was bought by another studio [Disney]. They’re starting to make movies now. But that for a while 20th Century wasn’t making any of their movies. I think now you’re seeing a few rolling out. We would love to.”

Previously, there had been some indications that deals or ideas had been thrown around behind the scenes as “Alita: Battle Angel” ended on a cliffhanger revealing Edward Norton as Nova, the next big villain Alita would have to face. Originally, when Cameron was attached to direct the plan was to shoot and release a trilogy of films. The global box office take of $405 million on a budget of $170 million wasn’t exactly on the scale of “Avatar” but seemingly was still enough for the studio to consider at least making one more installment given the mostly positive reception from audiences that did end up seeing it.

Then again, it’s hard to ignore all of the would-be film projects Rodriguez has developed over the years that simply never crossed the finish line such as “Barbarella,” “Red Sonja,” “Fire & Ice,” “Escape From New York,” a revival of the animated anthology film “Heavy Metal” spearheaded by Tim Miller/David Fincher, and his live-action “Jetsons” movie. We’ll simply have to be patient to see what he does next.

SOURCE: THE WRAP