Shazam! star Zachary Levi and Jane the Virgin‘s Gina Rodriguez have joined the cast of Spy Kids, the forthcoming reboot of Robert Rodriguez’s beloved kids-action franchise. The duo will play the parents of the new Spy Kids family, with Everly Carganilla and Connor Esterson as the titular kids. The film comes from Spyglass Entertainment, producers of the Scream reboot who have not just a sequel to that movie coming, but also a Hellraiser reboot coming to Hulu next year. Rodriguez, who alternates between family fare like Spy Kids and Sharkboy and Lava Girl and adult entertainment like Sin City and El Mariachi, is bringing the project to Netflix.
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Netflix is working with Rodriguez on this after the success of We Can Be Heroes, a follow-up to Sharkboy and Lava Girl. That project has become a huge hit for the streaming giant since its release in
“My most rabid fanbase all these years, by far, has been my kid films. My Spy Kids audience,” Rodriguez previously shared at Cinema-Con. “These kids watch those movies over and over because they’re action films made for children and families, in particular at a time when they need empowerment. Netflix came to me [for We Can Be Heroes] because the Spy Kids movies had done just so well on their service. They said ‘Could you make a series of films that do that?’ And I said, ‘I’d love to!’”
The original Spy Kids film was released over 20 years ago, and surprised moviegoers by earning $112 million at the domestic box office. The movie starred Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa PenaVega, Daryl Sabara, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Teri Hatcher, Cheech Marin, and Danny Trejo. In fact, it was Spy Kids that launched Rodriguez’s hyper-violent Machete films, which saw Trejo reprising his Spy Kids character in a much different way.
This isn’t the only upcoming project between Netflix and Rodriguez. It was announced last year that the director is working on a sequel to We Can Be Heroes for the streaming site.
“They’ve been shocked at how well it’s kept doing. They call it unstoppable,” Rodriguez told Collider when speaking about Netflix. “They’ve never seen any movie behave like that. It just will not stop. Kids will just not stop watching it. And I think it happened with the Spy Kid movies, but you couldn’t ever keep track of it, because you can’t tell how many times kids watch it on VCR or watch on Disney channel. But now with their metrics, they can tell how many times a household is watching something again and again, through completion. Which a lot of the times when it’s been a big opening weekend, it didn’t mean people actually watched the whole movie. It means they watched five minutes or more.”
Are you looking forward to seeing the reboot? Sound off in the comments!
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