A Terminator Travels 'From Dusk Till Dawn'

Welcome to back to bat country: Robert Patrick joins the cast of the new From Dusk 'til Dawn series, coming next year from Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network

If you've got some vampires to kill, why not get a terminator to do it? Robert Rodriguez's newest project, the El Rey Network has just announced that Terminator II: Judgement Day and The X-Files star Robert Patrick has joined the cast of the TV adaptation of From Dusk Till Dawn.

The details on the show are rarer than a bloodsucker in daylight, but it definitely seems season one is a longer recounting of Rodriguez's original. According to today's announcement, "The series deepens the tone of the film, adds new characters and backstories and expands the Mesoamerican mythology behind the creatures inside the club."

Patrick will play Jacob Fuller, the RV-driving patriarch and ex-priest played by Harvey Kietel in the original. Today's announcement adds Madison Davenport (Save Me, Shameless) in Juliette Lewis' old role as Kate Fuller, and Brandon Soo Hoo (Tropic Thunder, Ender's Game) taking over for Ernest Liu as Scott Fuller.

They'll be the unwilling travelling companions of bank robbing brothers Seth and Richie Gekko (D.J. Cotrona and Zane Holtz subbing for George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino respectively.) Looks like Don Johnson will take a bullet for Michael Parks as the ill-fated Sheriff Earl McGraw (that said, today's press blast called this a recurring role: But then again, with vampires, who knows?) Lane Garrison from the upcoming Bonnie and Clyde miniseries will play the hapless Pete, the liquor store clerk made so sleazily memorable by a young John Hawkes. Filling out the announced roster will be the first completely new character: Jesse Garcia (Sons of Anarchy) as Texas Ranger Freddie Gonzalez.

And there's one more all-important piece of casting. Salma Hayek's sinister and salacious turn as queen of the vampires Santanico Pandemonium was the show stopping musical number in the original. This time it's up to Mexican singer and actress Eiza González to get the good guys into all kinds of trouble.

Patrick has already taken one ride into Rodriguez's bat country. Back in 1999, he played career-criminal-turned-vampire-slayer Buck in From Dusk Till Dawn: Blood Money, the first of two direct-to-video sequels to Rodriguez's cult fave original. But if you have any doubts that a man made famous by playing steely-eyed killers can get all paternal, just remember how great he was as grieving father Special Agent John Doggett in The X-Files. Then go check out Lovelace and his confused struggle to understand his stepdaughter's forays into porn. And remember, they said that Keitel couldn't play a family man either.

The El Rey network debuts in December, and the first episode of the ten episodes of From Dusk Till Dawn is scheduled to air in first quarter of 2014.