Guillermo del Toro Laments Nearly Remaking Ray Bradbury’s ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ As Feature Film, Possibly For Disney

Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”) has a storied past with dream projects that have come and gone. “Frankstein,” his recent adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel, had been in development for decades before it landed at Netflix. In an interview promoting the Gothic sci-fi horror tale, he reveals that he nearly adapted another beloved literary story for the big screen that got away, this one authored by the iconic Ray Bradbury.

During an interview with the “Inklings Book Club” podcast, the host gifted del Toro a copy of Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” as he was surprised and blurted out that he had once tried to turn the book into a project, but reminded himself he was still under a studio NDA and couldn’t really talk about it.

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“This is a book I’ve tried to adapt a few times, I adore it…It is his best book. I know it very well, and I think it’s one of the greatest American novels…And I have an NDA that prevents me from sharing more about how I tried to adapt it or not. [Holding up the book] This is a movie I would have loved to have done.”

The book had been previously adapted for the screen in Disney‘s 1983 version helmed by director Jack Clayton. Given the film’s connection to the House of Mouse, we have to make an easy assumption that his NDA might be connected to the studio. Disney is also where del Toro was briefly attached to do a modern revival of “The Haunted Mansion” for them, with Ryan Gosling circling a lead role before they decided to go on and remake the haunted house flick on their own.

A logline for the novel via Amazon: The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. The shrill siren song of a calliope beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes and the stuff of nightmares.

Back in 2022, the director briefly spoke to NME about how the Bradbury book had had such an impact on him, his work, and the chances of adapting the material.

“I’ve been wanting to make that book since I was a teenager. Bradbury just has an understanding of childhood in such a complex and compelling way. ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ has been looming over me and everything I do for my whole life. It’s in the friendship between the two kids in ‘The Devil’s Backbone.’ It’s there in the menacing universe of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth‘…I don’t know. It’s hard for me to talk about making movies that belong to a studio library, right, because I don’t control the property. I’ve been trying to do certain movies or other, and I sometimes get them, and sometimes I don’t.”

This wouldn’t be the only time that del Toro has struggled to get a literation adaptation in front of cameras; notably, he tried to get Universal Pictures to finance a feature film take on H.P. Lovecraft‘s “At The Mountains of Madness” that almost had Tom Cruise and his good luck charm Ron Perlman, best known for the “Hellboy” movies, in main roles.

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“Fury” and the stop motion animated film “The Buried Giant” are upcoming projects for del Toro, with the former seeing him reunite with actor Oscar Isaac (“Frankenstein”).

You can watch or listen to that full exchange with del Toro on that podcast episode below.