Despite the wealth of problems surrounding Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse project (the fact that us Brits never got to see the film in all it’s double-feature glory being chief among them), a two-minute sliver of balls-out action stood out amid a swathe of iffy reviews. It was the fake trailer for an old-school exploitation movie named Machete, and it was pretty damn awesome.

Not that director Robert Rodriguez ever expected it to be quite so popular, as rabid fans everywhere began clamouring for the full-length movie “promised” by the trailer.

“I didn’t realise it would become a feature film,” said Rodriguez to About.Com, “or I would have shot more footage while we were there at the locations!  It was great to make the trailer, (but) it wasn't until there was such a big fan response(that) people would then see the trailer online, and they would come up to me (about it).”

According to Rodriguez, “Bob Weinstein even said that ‘I want to see that movie’,” and soon enough, the director was being asked more questions about Machete than anything else on his slate, with even former fan-bait Sin City 2 being elbowed off the agenda.

“Usually fans would come up and say, 'When are you going to make Sin City 2?'”, he continues, “but more than that they would say, 'When are you going to make Machete?' Because they had seen the trailer and they just felt like it had already been made. 'When is that movie coming out?' 'Did you make that movie or are you going to make that movie?' And they would ask so consistently that I finally had to make it.”

But whilst it might have taken some persistent badgering from the fans to get the project up and running, Rodriguez has been toying with the idea since way back in 1994…