Danny Trejo Enlists Fans to Campaign for Machete 3

Danny Trejo is urging fans to campaign for a third film in his Machete franchise. The action film from director Robert Rodriguez became a quick cult classic, and propelled Trejo from side character roles in films such as Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Con Air, to a leading actor. Machete was released in 2010 and was followed by a sequel, titled Machete Kills. The wait for Machete Kills in Space has been a long one, but Trejo isn’t giving up hope, and is calling on his legion of fans to make their voices be heard and make Machete 3 happen.

ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian hosted a panel for Danny Trejo at MegaCon over the weekend, where the prolific actor brought up the third and long-awaited Machete movie. After joking about how many people Trejo has killed on camera in his acting career, he turned his attention to the crowd and stated, “I want everybody here to get on social media and text Robert Rodriguez about Machete Kills in Space.” When asked if Machete 3 is going to happen, Trejo nodded his head and said, “Yeah,” before posing for a group picture with everyone in attendance at the panel.

Robert Rodriguez gives update on Machete Kills in Space

Machete came to life thanks to a fake trailer for 2007’s Grindhouse film. The Machete movies have never been box-office juggernauts, but they’ve kept fans coming back for more of Danny Trejo’s machete-waving protagonist. Machete Kills in Space followed its predecessors by also being teased via a fake trailer, and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez addressed the growing crowd that wants to see a third Machete film in the franchise.

“Danny calls me all the time. He films a whole audience that he’s speaking to, and they’re all saying ‘Machete in Space!’” Robert Rodriguez told Deadline back in March 2023. “That’s why I put a fake trailer for that on Machete 2, to kind of satisfy them. This is pretty much what it would look like, but you can see it in two minutes rather than two hours. And it never satisfies them, so we have to do it. But you know, the original was just a fake trailer on Grindhouse. I recorded the audience reaction and put it on the Blu-ray of Planet Terror. You can’t hear half the trailer. When it first came up people were so shocked. Danny was the lead, Cheech was in it, they’re cheering so loud and we’re kind of taken aback. They’d never seen a Latin hero.”

He continued, “So they would bug us for five years, ‘When’s that movie coming out?’” I said, “‘It was a fake trailer.’ ‘No, but it looked real! When is it coming out?’ So we’ve got to make it for them. So five years later I made that movie. It wasn’t meant to be a film, the audience just wanted it. So we have to give it to them. Because when someone wants something that bad, I’ve never had that with any movie before. Now everyone’s still ‘Machete in Space!’ You can’t give ’em enough.”