U is for Universal Studios
As maybe the greatest living advocate of the movie monster, it’s no surprise that del Toro has had a long history with Universal Studios, the studio that made their name with a host of classic creature features. As far back as 2002, del Toro’s been circling projects there, most notably a remake of “The Creature From The Black Lagoon,” pitching a take that he described as “set in Victorian times during the exploration of the Amazon… I want to increase the the horror edge and make it really scary, because my archaeological explorers will discover an area of the Amazon that has been kept on a tangential track of evolution alongside mankind. So there will be giant carnivorous squid, prehistoric sharks and weird alternate lifeforms that shouldn’t really exist in such a fresh-water environment.” But talks ultimately came to naught, and the film still hasn’t been redone.
More recently, he struck (as you’ll have picked up throughout this piece) a multi-film deal with the studio, covering “Drood,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Frankenstein” and a fourth project, a new take on “Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.” “If you tell the story fully, you can not only see it as a story of repression, of the build-up of repression until it manifests itself like a monster,” he told MTV in 2008. “I think that Hyde — yes, he’s a creature of subterranean desire and all that — but it’s more than that. He’s an addiction.” But with Russell Crowe appearing as Dr. Jekyll in next year’s “The Mummy,” ahead of his own movie as part of the interlocking-monsters universe at the studio, this version, like his “Frankenstein,” may be dead for now.
V is for “Van Helsing”
Speaking of Universal, after he departed “The Hobbit,” there was a brief moment in time, seemingly, when del Toro was developing a new movie about vampire slayer and Dracula enemy Van Helsing, just a few years after Stephen Sommers’ nearly unwatchable Hugh Jackman vehicle. Tom Cruise was producing and likely to star, but a deal with del Toro was never struck, and he eventually dropped the project in favor of “At The Mountains Of Madness.” Cruise was able to eventually scratch his Universal monster itch, as he’s headlining “The Mummy” next year, but del Toro hasn’t yet been so lucky.
W is for “The Witches,” “Wind In The Willows” and “Watchmen”
Guillermo del Toro and Roald Dahl would seem to be a match made in heaven, and it came tantalizingly close to happening. In 2006, del Toro and friend Alfonso Cuarón were attached to a version of Dahl’s “The Witches” (previously filmed by Nicolas Roeg in 1990) for Warner Bros., with Cuaron revealing in 2008 that he would be producing, and del Toro directing “completely in stop-motion animation.” The greenlight proved elusive, but del Toro considers it one of his favorite of his screenplays, and says that Dahl’s widow Felicity agrees, telling him, “I honestly think it’s the best adaptation of Roald Dahl’s books ever.” He says he’s still keen to make it, so hopefully there’s movement one day.
Another children’s classic that he was once attached to was Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind In The Willows,” a film that’s never really had a definitive film version. The director was attached to a live-action/CGI version at Disney in the early 2000s, before even “Hellboy,” but would later tell Rotten Tomatoes that “it was a beautiful book, and then I went to meet with the executives and they said, ‘Could you give Toad a skateboard and make him say ‘radical dude’ things, and that’s when I said ‘It’s been a pleasure!” Del Toro would also reveal in 2008 that he was offered “Watchmen” before Zack Snyder, but he “just couldn’t get my head around The Watchmen being two or three hours long.”
X is for (e)Xorcist 4
Attempts to make an “Exorcist” prequel in the early ’00s proved disastrous — two movies of the same story, one by Paul Schrader, the other by Renny Harlin, both flops and neither any good — were made. But if the producers had picked del Toro, who was asked to pitch after “Mimic” and before “The Devil’s Backbone,” things could have been very different. Del Toro told a live interview in 2006 that his version, called “Exorcist: Chapter 4 Verse I,” would have seen Father Merrin brought in to investigate the murder of a priest by a possessed child in the Vatican during WW2.
Del Toro explained then when he pitched it, the Morgan Creek executives responded, ‘That’s fantastic, but there’s only one thing. We want the movie but we don’t want there to be an exorcism in it.’ So I said ‘But it’s called The Exorcist.’ ‘Yeah, but the last movie had an exorcism and it didn’t make money.’ That was the last meeting I took on that one.”
Y is for (Double Dare) You
Not a specific company but actually a label, Double Dare You was announced by Disney back in 2009 as a boutique shingle at the company designed to make films “full of chills and thrills for audiences of all ages” for the company. “Trollhunters” (see above) was meant to be the first product of the deal, but del Toro says it quickly fell apart, in part because “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark,” which he produced, ended up getting an R rating, and partly because Disney “got tired of waiting” while he was in New Zealand working on “The Hobbit.”
Z is for “(o)Z The Great And Powerful”
One of the thinnest links here, but jeez, we had to do something for Z: Back in 2010, when Sam Mendes had just dropped out of the then-Robert Downey Jr.-starring version of the film that became “Oz The Great And Powerful,” del Toro was rumored to be being courted by Disney to helm the project. Either it was scuttlebutt or it never came to pass, but either way, Sam Raimi signed on eventually.
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