‘Grindhouse’ Spin-Off ‘Machete’ Coming To Theaters

Attention all “Grindhouse” fans – the Machete is coming for you!

“Machete,” the first trailer shown before the “Grindhouse” double feature will be turned into its own feature film, actor Danny Trejo revealed to Access Hollywood.

Trejo, who plays the title character in the trailer, broke the news to Access on the red carpet of Tuesday night’s “1408” premiere.

While speculation had the film being made as a direct-to-DVD feature, Trejo said the plan is to release it in theaters.

“We’re doing it,” Trejo said. “We’re going to try and get it done this year.”

As it turns out, “Grindhouse” co-director Robert Rodriguez wrote “Machete” in 1993 with Trejo in mind, after casting the heavily tattooed actor in “Desperado.”

“I had cast him in Desperado and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean-Claude Van Damme.’ So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S.,” Rodriguez said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don’t want to get their own agents killed on, they’ll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, ‘That’s Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it’s peanuts.’ But I never got around to making it.”

Trejo, whose other film credits include “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Heat,” “Spy Kids” and “Con Air,” could barely hold back his excitement when talking with Access about the new project.

“If there’s gotta be a Latino superstar, it might as well be me,” he laughed.

No word yet on a possible release date.