Guillermo del Toro, beloved genre filmmaker behind “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the “Hellboy” movies, was at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend talking up his remake of ’70s TV movie “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” pitching his take on a new Haunted Mansion movie for Disney, and consoling nerds who cried themselves to sleep when they learned that the director wouldn’t be directing the two-part “Hobbit” movie for Peter Jackson.
And while he didn’t explicitly state what his next movie would be, he did let slip that it would have a little more dimensionality than his earlier films.
While speaking to Collider at the convention, he mentioned his reluctance in using 3D for “The Hobbit” because he wanted some visual coherence between the original trilogy and his proposed two films. “Personally, I was not in favor of it for ‘The Hobbit’ because, at that time, I thought it needed to be completely cohesive with the trilogy,” del Toro said.
But when pushed about his excitement for the process, he let a little bombshell slip: “I want to do it, and the next movie I do will be in 3D.”
Again: we have no idea what his next movie will be. “The Haunted Mansion” Redux? Sounds like he’s just producing, “In the Mountains of Madness” for Universal. “Frankenstein?” One of the roughly ten thousand projects he’s been attached to (like an adaptation of Dan Simmons’ rip-snorting historical novel “Drood”)? The fact that it’s going to be in 3D puts it in more of the “escapist popcorn movie” wheelhouse, which probably nixes “Drood” or anything even remotely serious (like his next proposed small movie “Saturn and the End of Days”).
At any rate, we hope del Toro, who is endlessly talking about how he is going to announce his next directorial gig any day now, finally actually announces it.