Many of you will remember the short film Hobo With A Shotgun, directed by Jason Eisener which won the Grindhouse Trailer Contest put on by the SXSW Film Festival & Robert Rodriguez. It all began with an announcement on Ain’t It Cool News, about a contest that gave a three week deadline to come up with a “grindhouse” style trailer for a fake movie and would later appear in between Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof.
Well ever since the Dartmouth filmmakers’ (Jason Eisener, Robert Cotterill and John Davies) won the notorious Trailer Competition in Austin, they have become a favourite among fans of the gore-action-comedy genre garnering more than 500,000 Internet hits. After much anticipation, the talented trio was ready to give Hobo With A Shotgun feature-length treatment and officially announced their plans to do so when they screened their award winning short film Treevenge at the 2008 Fantasia Film Festival.
Fast forward two years later and Eisener and Cotterill have not only completed the feature but had it scheduled to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The team who was hoping to 
grab a sale for US distribution rights at the festival can now sit back and relax since they no longer have to.
THR reports Magnet, the genre division of Magnolia, has picked up the film for distribution in the US. Tom Quinn from Magnet called the film “Pure blood-drunk, bat-shit-crazy fun,” elaborating that “both Jason Eisener and Rutger Hauer were born to make Hobo.”
The distributors have been on a role lately purchasing the likes of Bangkok Knockout, Vanishing on 7th Street, Black Death and The Troll Hunter.
Hobo With A Shotgun tells the story of a vigilante homeless man who pulls into a new city and finds himself trapped in urban chaos, a city where crime rules and where the city’s crime boss reigns. Seeing an urban landscape filled with armed robbers, corrupt cops, abused prostitutes and even a pedophile Santa, the Hobo goes about bringing justice to the city the best way he knows how – with a 20-gauge shotgun. Mayhem ensues when he tries to make things better for the future generation. Street justice will indeed prevail.
Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner, The Hitcher) will play the Hobo, while Molly Dunsworth is cast as his ally Abby, Brian Downey (Lexx) as crime boss Drake and Greg Smith (Everwood) as Drake’s son Slick. Others in this strong ensemble cast include Robb Wells (Trailer Park Boys), Nick Bateman, Drew O’Hara, Pasha Ebrahimi, Juanita Peters and Scott Vrooman.
Watch the unrated trailer below