Guillermo del Toro has a number of projects at various stages of development, but now he has apparently nailed down which one he wants to direct once he has completed work on the upcoming monster vs. robot epic Pacific Rim. Moving away from sci-fi and back to horror, it has been revealed that the Mexican filmmaker has named the ghost story Crimson Peak as his next effort.
Deadline says that the script was originally written by del Toro and his writing partner Matthew Robbins, and it is now undergoing a rewrite done by the director and Lucinda Coxon. Much like Pacific Rim, the film will be made with Legendary Pictures and presumably released by Warner Bros.
While the filmmaker didn't drop any details about the plot - simply saying that it's "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story" that will allow him to "play with the conventions of the genre...and at the same time subvert the old rules" - he does say that it's inspired by movies like Robert Wise's The Haunting, Jack Clayton's The Innocents, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. He aims to start production on the movie in early 2014.
He adds that a key reason that he wants to make the movie is because of how much freedom and trust he got while working on Pacific Rim with Legendary. After describing that experience as "the best experience I have ever had making a movie, period," he apparently pitched executives Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni his ideas for At The Mountains of Madness, The Count Of Monte Cristo, and Crimson Peak. Of the three projects, Tull and Jashni reacted to the third name the most. The hope is still alive for his H.P. Lovecraft project, however, Legendary wants to put some space between it and Pacific Rim. Said Del Toro, "My hope is, down the line we can do it. People ask how do I choose projects. All the projects in my roster are there because I love them, but the financing process is serendipity. And often, the ones I think will happen don’t, and the ones I think won’t happen, do."
Pacific Rim will be in theaters July 12, 2013.
