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Guillermo del Toro Wants to Remake Count of Monte Cristo

by Alex Billington
February 25, 2009
Source: MTV

One of my personal all-time favorite movies is Kevin Reynolds' The Count of Monte Cristo, the one from 2002, not the old black and white versions. Anyone who has seen it or read Alexandre Dumas' book knows why it's such an incredible story. I couldn't ever imagine anyone adapting it again, but if there's one person I might allow to do just that, it would be Guillermo del Toro. He already has enough projects on his plate to last him a lifetime, but in a recent chat with MTV, del Toro talked about one of his dreams, which was adapting The Count of Monte Cristo again as a "gothic-western" titled The Left Hand of Darkness.

"It's a gothic-western retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, and I co-wrote it with [Kitt Carson] and Matthew Robbins around 1993 to 1998. I wrote a lot of that during the kidnapping of my father, so it’s of a lot of rage." If you didn't know, del Toro's father was kidnapped in 1997 and held for 72 days before they paid the ransom and he was returned. "I adore that screenplay," del Toro says, but as for whether it will ever see the light of day, we're not sure. Although del Toro won't let it end up in the hands of another director. "If I can fight, sue, or hit someone to keep the project with me, I will keep them. And I'll get them made."

While this falls under the category of "highly unlikely", or at least not for more than a century, it is another one of those del Toro ideas that I'd love to see. He's got so many those that he might as well start a studio and hire writers to make all of them, because that could be quite lucrative, and then we'd actually get to see a lot of them instead of just hear him talk about them. Being both a big fan of The Count of Monte Cristo and Guillermo del Toro, it would be a dream of my own to see the two come together. Especially knowing that he put a lot of rage into the script, because that's what drives a lot of the story. Maybe one day?

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