The decade following The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been a somewhat challenging one for Sean Astin. The former star of The Goonies and Rudy had a part in season 5 of 24 and also did a fair amount of voice acting work, but has not been able to land many roles in high-profile A-list projects. Instead, he has chosen to star in some low budget genre films, a move that is becoming more and more respectable nowadays as direct-to-video slowly gets replaced by video-on-demand. Now he will headline his most prominent genre flick yet, a prequel to Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever called Cabin Fever: Patient Zero. The film is being directed by comic book artist Kaare Andrews from a screenplay by Jake Wade Wall (The Hitcher).

According to THR, Astin will join Brando Eaton (Balls Out: The Gary Houseman Story) and Ben Hollingsworth (The Joneses) in the horror film, which starts shooting this month in the Dominican Republic. The story revolves around “a bachelor party cruise in the Caribbean” that “unexpectedly runs ashore on a medical-research island and a deadly virus is unleashed.” They are also planning an additional Cabin Fever spin-off called Cabin Fever: Outbreak, although it’s unclear if it will be a direct continuation of Patient Zero with the same cast.

THR refers to the film as a “reboot”, although I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It will give the franchise a fresh start and set it up for more sequels, but it’s certainly not a retelling of the original Cabin Fever in any way, shape or form. They already made one DTV sequel, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, directed by Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) — unfortunately it wasn’t very well-received and West himself was not happy with how it turned out either. Would you watch another Cabin Fever movie? Are you surprised that Eli Roth’s directorial debut has spawned this many sequels and spin-offs?