sheetsadam1 — 10 years ago(December 31, 2015 10:26 PM)

Looking at his upcoming projects, Fire and Ice could potentially be a masterpiece, but would require a pretty big budget that I'm not sure anybody would offer him right now. I can see how his style would lend itself to Jonny Quest, but live-action adaptations of beloved animated characters are by no means a sure thing critically or from a box office perspective. Battle Angel would undoubtedly be a hit with James Cameron's involvement, but I fear that with the big budget and Cameron's script, Rodriguez would risk his visual style getting lost 5b4in the mix. It reminds me a bit of when fellow '90s indie breakout Kevin Smith made Cop Out. Rodriguez definitely needs a hit after a string of recent flops, but I think he could still make one on a low or moderate budget without completely abandoning his signature style and he could then use the profits or the buzz to get Fire and Ice made.
These would be my suggestions. I think any of them could possibly do the trick:

1. An over-the-top action movie in the same vein as the Mexico trilogy or the first Machete, but with a more marketable lead than Danny Trejo. Not necessarily a current A-list actor, but not somebody who's doing direct-to-video either. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, or Statham would work, with Trejo and maybe some Asian stars like Tony Jaa or Iko Uwais in supporting roles. Hell, if he's going to start doing director-for-hire work, it seems to me that The Expendables 4 would be a better fit for him than Battle Angel.
2. Horror. He's obviously no stranger to the genre, having made From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty and Planet Terror and horror is one of the more profitable genres out there. I'd suggest he stay away from the overused found footage subgenre, but a decent horror film can be made for a few million even today and make substantially more than that in profits. We haven't had a good slasher film in a while, so that's one possibility.
3. Call Tarantino. Quentin says he is retiri5b4ng after making his tenth movie, but has mentioned literally dozens of potential projects over the years. He has to have some scripts gathering dust somewhere and Robert is the only other living filmmaker who has ever brought one of his scripts to the screen.