Guillermo del Toro has had a number of big-budget Hollywood projects stall out over the last several years, from his version of “The Hobbit” (later taken over by Peter Jackson) to the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation “At the Mountains of Madness.” As reported last month, the latest project to hit a snag is “Pacific Rim 2,” a sequel to the director's 2013 blockbuster that pitted giant monsters against towering, human-steered robots — and it's a development that may have turned Del Toro off to the Hollywood machine for the foreseeable future.
“What I can tell you quite safely is, I don”t intend to keep on doing big, giant Hollywood movies for much longer,” he told the Guardian in a recent interview to promote his upcoming gothic romance “Crimson Peak.” “Crimson Peak is a great permit for me to work on a smaller scale. I mean, it”s big for a drama, but it”s a much smaller undertaking than 'Pacific Rim' or 'Hellboy.' I can”t say which ones, but I”ve been offered gigantic movies in the superhero genre, but I don”t like the superheroes that are… nice. I like the dark ones, so 'Blade' and 'Hellboy' were right for me. The mechanics of action only interest me when it”s a universe very, very close to my heart, which 'Pacific Rim' is, and I love it. I”m not going to pursue action movies or superhero movies at all any more. I hope I can go back to doing the smaller, weirder ones.”
The Guardian piece later teases one of these “smaller, weirder” projects: “Silva,” which Del Toro reportedly envisions as a low-budget, black-and-white film about a Mexican masked wrestler who discovers a terrifying secret: all politicians are vampires. It's a film he's been trying to get off the ground for years, but he hasn't confirmed whether it will be his next movie.
What does seem certain is that Del Toro is turning his attention away from studio blockbusters towards “stuff that is a little bit more cagey, a little bit more quirky,” as he stated in another recent interview with the podcast Happy Sad Confused (as well as a profile in Variety, which pegs a “small, independently financed movie that [Del Toro] is keeping under tight wraps” as his next film). Indeed, his next move could well be a return to the style of “Cronos,” the low-budget 1993 Mexican vampire film that put him on Hollywood's radar in the first place.
So could his next film actually be “Silva”? For now, Del Toro isn't saying. As he told Happy Sad Confused's Josh Horowitz: “I learned through the years, you wanna make God laugh? Tell him what your next movie is.”
“Crimson Peak” hits theaters on Friday.
[via The Playlist]