Trivia / Thanksgiving (2023)

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Patrick Dempsey had wanted to do a horror film for some time and was particularly interested in the script since he had grown up in a small town in Maine.
• Billing Displacement: Nell Verlaque is billed fifth on the poster, despite playing the main protagonist of the film. While Patrick Dempsey receiving top billing is understandable due to being the most well-known actor in the cast and play as the main villain, Verlaque is also billed below Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, and Jalen Thomas Brooks, who all play supporting roles. In the title credits, however, Verlaque is billed second.
• Defictionalization: The third of the Grindhouse fake trailers to be adapted into a full feature.
• Development Hell: Plans to adapt the original parody trailer from Grindhouse were in the works since 2010, taking thirteen years to finally be realized. This was because Eli Roth was working on other projects while constantly tweaking the script in between to improve its quality.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Patrick Dempsey has played a bad guy a few times in his career before, like as the conniving human traitor businessman in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. But that's nothing compared to him as the Sheriff who turns out to be the psychopathic slasher John Carver, Chewing the Scenery and throwing out Thanksgiving related threats once he's found out.
  • Zigzagged with Rick Hoffman, who seems to be playing the usual kind of jerkass he tends to play, only for his character to reveal that he's been burying himself in his work to deal with the death of his late wife, choosing to cancel the next Black Friday sale and try to help capture the killer however he could after being chewed out by everyone, including his daughter Jessica.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early hopes for the movie was having the finished film be part of a hypothetical Grindhouse sequel as a double feature with a full length adaptation of Don't, the parody trailer directed by Edgar Wright .
  • Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell's original idea for The Carver's motives was that he was a boy who had fallen in love with a turkey his dad killed for the holiday and in retaliation, murdered his whole family. Years later he would come back to take revenge on his town after being sent to a mental institution for the crime.

---