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Updates on What Guillermo del Toro Has in Store Coming Up

by Ethan Anderton
June 26, 2010
Source: Collider

Now that the planets have aligned and Peter Jackson is coming back to direct The Hobbit movies, everyone can stop worrying about who will be journeying to Middle Earth and start thinking about what the project's departed director, the brilliant Guillermo del Toro, has coming down the pipeline. Though del Toro has stated he will announce his next project at Comic-Con in July, that hasn't stopped the masses from rampant speculation as to what it might be. There's a whole slew of potential projects for him to pick from and luckily our friends at Collider caught up with him at the Saturn Awards where he talked at length about his future.

Before he was set to direct The Hobbit, del Toro had his name attached to plenty of upcoming projects like an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, a new iteration of Frankenstein, and even a different take on The Count of Monte Cristo that has been titled The Left Hand of Darkness. Read below for a breakdown of what del Toro said in relation to these projects followed by some pretty solid deductive logic from Collider attempting to figure out exactly what his next project may be. For now the only thing we know for sure is that he's narrowed it down to three potentials. Here's the lowdown on a few of those projects:

At the Mountains of Madness: Del Toro has talked about this project several times before, but it doesn't sound like it's any closer to getting off the ground than it might have been previously. "There's stuff that I really would love to do. Like always, I'm like a broken record, I would love to be doing [At the] Mountains of Madness, but still, even now, it's very difficult for the studios to take the step of doing an R-rated tentpole movie with a tough ending, no love story, [and] set in period." He mentions how hard it is to truly know how big the fanbase/readership is for an author like Lovecraft whose work is in the public domain, and that's another issue keeping studios from jumping on board.

Frankenstein: Previously we'd heard that Del Toro's go-to guy for creature work, Doug Jones, would be the man behind the make-up for Frankenstein's monster. Not only does he confirm this bit of casting, but he says they've already done the body and face sculpting for his make-up, including the nuts (while it seems like he's making a joke about the nuts/bolts on the monster's neck, I think he did actually mean testicles because he said jokingly they "are something to behold"). Of course the screenplay isn't done yet, but Del Toro considers Frankenstein's monster and The Creature from the Black Lagoon the "Holy Grails of Universal monsters" and is very passionate about staying true to Mary Shelly's novel.

Hellboy 3: Much like Frankenstein, in order to move forward on this they would need to get a screenplay together first and Del Toro says "the Hellboy screenplays are not quick to write. For whatever reason they end up being very complicated to write; I don't know why. So if we went and did Hellboy it would need to be the next movie after [my next project]." I'd say this is the project that's probably furthest from his mind at this point, and since the three projects he's considering actually have developed screenplays, we know this is not one of those projects.

Saturn and the End of Days: This is a project that we haven't heard anything about since it was first announced over two years ago in early 2008 and now we know why. Apparently the story of a kid named Saturn who is watching the end of the world while walking back and forth from the supermarket is just too hard to crack as Del Toro says he is stuck on only page 25 of the screenplay. So there's another project that likely isn't among the three potential projects he'll direct next.

The Left Hand of Darkness: Now this is a project that we've heard del Toro talk about before, and while he didn't directly mention this one during the interview, Collider has deduced that this just might be one of the potential three projects del Toro is considering and could even be the frontrunner. In the interview, del Toro mentions that "if the [project] that I think will happen happens, it's something that I started 15 years ago." Sounds like we have a winner.

Jump to early 2009 and you may remember del Toro talked about this adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo and revealed he'd been working on it for quite awhile. "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." Somewhere between those years is the 15-year mark. It's also pointed out that it would be very familiar to people and can be considered a "world creation." A novel from a French author can certainly be considered that, and with all the love for contemporary but period-set adaptations of classic literature like Sherlock Holmes and The Three Musketeers from Paul W.S. Anderson, this sounds like it would be the most appealing to studios.

Those are all the specific projects mentioned along with some solid speculation from Collider. Though del Toro was careful to keep the names of the new projects secret, he did say only one of the three potentials would be part of his development deal at Universal Studios, and the other two would not. After his break-up with The Hobbit, del Toro jokes that he didn't want to do a rebound movie and wanted to make sure that his next film needed him and not the other way around (he explains that he wanted a project that could not be told without his vision, so to speak). I'm very glad he's trying to make sure he picks something incredible.

In addition to these projects, don't forget previously mentioned del Toro projects like Drood, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Slaughterhouse-Five, most recently Van Helsing, plus many, many more. For now we'll just have to wait patiently until Comic-Con arrives in July to hear what del Toro will tackle as his next project. I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait to find out! What do you want Guillermo del Toro direct next?

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