No Star Wars For Guillermo Del Toro

[Karloff]

No Star Wars For Guillermo Del Toro

Del Toro still has hopes for his Mountains of Madness adaptation.

If you were hoping Guillermo Del Toro - the man behind Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy - was going to direct the next Star Wars movies, you're about to be disappointed. Though the Mexican director admits he was approached, he turned the chance down.

"It was very flattering," said Del Toro. "It was just a phone call, it didn't go past that, it was very nice to be asked, but believe it or not, I'm busy enough." Plus, Del Toro is on record as only really liking monsters - "I like the weird ones, frankly," he said in a Playlist [http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/guillermo-del-toro-says-hes-trying-to-mount-mountains-of-madness-one-more-says-the-hulk-tv-show-is-possibly-dormant-20130107] interview - and while Star Wars has its share of monsters, few of them tend to be protagonists.

As for monsters, Del Toro still holds out some hope for his Mountains of Madness adaptation [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108281-Rumor-Del-Toro-Directing-Cthulhu-Film-With-Tom-Cruise], which has stalled up till now. "Once more into the dark abyss," Del Toro says. "We're gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year and see if any [studio's] interested."

So we should be hearing more about that any day now, but it probably isn't a good idea to get your hopes up. When it dropped dead last time, it was the R rating that killed it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/3281-The-Numbers], and - so far at least - Del Toro hasn't given any indication he's willing to budge, either on rating or the $150 million budget.

Source: Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/08/star-wars-guillermo-del-toro-force]


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[tehroc]

I still don't see how At The Mountains Of Madness translates into a Hollywood movie. The story is completely about building suspense with almost no conflict involved. That doesn't scream box office hit to me.

If it was up to me, I'd try to score Peter Jackson to direct a Disney Star Wars movie.

 

[Dangit2019]

Eh, it's not really his material anyway. He's deeper in the dark and mysterious fantasy, not the flashy archetypal stories in Star Wars.

Still looking forward to Pacific Rim, though.

 

[redknightalex]

I can't see him doing a Star Wars film. If Pan's Labyrinth, the only movie of his I've seen, is any indication as to his style, then Star Wars would not be the fit for him, or the audience.

And Pan's Labyrinth was just a bit weird.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

I, too, am waiting for the "Mountain of Madness" Film. I really hope someone somewhere picks it up with the budget and the rating. I wanna see Eldritch Horror on the Big Screen, Darn it!

 

[Caffeine_Bombed]

Better get busy with Hellboy 3 at some point... ¬_¬

 

[risenbone]

Wonder if this would work.

Instead of pitching the idea to studios how about putting this big presentation on the internet and see if you can get several million people to buy into the idea and then stick it up on kickstarter with a 200 million goal and as long a term as kickstarter allows. Rewards could be for every 10 dollars get a ticket to see the movie. I mean if games can get millions of dollars out of kickstarter with nothing more than pie in the sky developer dreams surely a name big enough to be approached to direct a Star Wars movie with a pitch developed over a year or so would rake it in.

 

[kyogen]

Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, not Spanish.

And thank goodness he's not doing Star Wars. There are more interesting projects out there for him. He doesn't need to shackle himself to a franchise that has so many established practices already.

 

[Rainboq]

Could have been interesting, whenever you see Del Toro's name as the director, you KNOW shit is going to go down.

 

[Karloff]

Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, not Spanish.

Adjusted! My bad.

 

[Meatspinner]

Aww man... first Bird man now Spanish guy. All my favorites are turning this down

I think this is in order

 

[Falseprophet]

I'm a huge fan of the man, and I consider this good news. He's a pretty creative visionary at a pretty decent place in his career. The last thing he needs is to deal with the largest multimedia conglomerate on the planet breathing down his neck while the largest, most vocal and extremely entitled fanbase in the world yells in his face.

 

[SquidVicious]

I still don't see why it needs an R-rating to be honest. Lovecraft was all about suspense and dread, not visceral gore, violence, nudity, or swearing. I mean obviously with it being an adaptation I'm not expecting the movie version to follow the novella word-for-word, but I also don't see how you can't do a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft without an R-rating.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

So basically what I'm taking away from the "At the mountains of madness" thing is: Fuck the MPAA right in their prudish and antiquated rating system.

It's actually not the MPAA. An R rating is fine with them, the death sentence rating is NC-17 (which can still get released, but very few theaters will actually run a movie with that rating.) The problem is that an R-rating cuts out all the kids between the ages of 13 and 16 whose parents drop them off at the mall to go watch a movie. Under the age of 17, most (really all reputable) theaters won't let anyone in without a 21 year old to vouch for them. That translates into a lot of money missed out on for the studios from young teenagers hanging out at the mall. So basically, don't blame the MPAA on this one. Blame Paramount et al.

Edit: Forgot to post something relevant to the actual topic.

I'm kind of sad to see him refusing to direct it, because he's one of the few directors that really knows how to make a fantasy world look real. Just little background details that show life is happening outside of what our heroes are doing. His movies have it, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had it, The Dark Crystal had it, and[footnote]for their time, they've since been outdone in this respect, and the prequels weren't especially good at it[/footnote] the original Star Wars trilogy had it. I'd hate to see another prequel trilogy, with lifeless videogame worlds. I want another original trilogy, with living theme park worlds.

 

[kyogen]

Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, not Spanish.

Adjusted! My bad.

Thanks for that. Good save. Nice news blurb, btw.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Eh, Star Wars isn't his thing so I'm not terribly surprised. Plus, if these movies turn out to be as bad as the prequels, who wants their name tied to that?

 

[Diddy_Mao]

I still don't see how At The Mountains Of Madness translates into a Hollywood movie. The story is completely about building suspense with almost no conflict involved. That doesn't scream box office hit to me...

I don't know about that. I would argue that of all the Lovecraft stories, At Mountains of Madness seems the most likely candidate for a big budget film. Thematically and structurally it's got a lot of the same elements as movies like King Kong, The Lost world, Journey to the Center of the Earth and for better or worse more modern films like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Prometheus.

Regardless of personal preference for any or all of those films they all have the same structural formula as AtMoM.

A group of explorers travels into the great unknown on little more than rumor, find a world they weren't expecting, get attacked by the weird and bizarre local wildlife, stumble across an even bigger discovery and in the end it all goes horribly wrong as a great beast goes on a rampage and almost kills everyone.

I still don't see why it needs an R-rating to be honest. Lovecraft was all about suspense and dread, not visceral gore, violence, nudity, or swearing. I mean obviously with it being an adaptation I'm not expecting the movie version to follow the novella word-for-word, but I also don't see how you can't do a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft without an R-rating.

You're not wrong, a lot of adaptations of Lovecrafts work have failed miserably because they focus too much on the monsters and violence and not enough on the fear and dread. But in this case I can see the case being made for an R rating due to its two primary set pieces.


#1. The attack on the advance camp: When the advance party loses radio contact and the second team goes to investigate they find that the entire camp has been killed. More to the point they have been butchered like livestock and at least two of them have been dissected and experimented on. I rarely promote the idea of heavy gore but in this case it's important to show that the people weren't just killed but that the manner of their death showed an intelligence and curiosity but lacked compassion.

#2. As they explore the city they discover a lot of lost history regarding the Elder Things creating life as slave races to construct their empire and fight wars against the other species that had arrived on earth (The Star Spawn and Mi-Go I think) If I'm remembering the story correctly it's heavily insinuated that Humans were among the species created by the Elder Things to fight their wars. This means at least one flashback of a bunch of humans betting slaughtered en masse by horrible space monsters. While this isn't going to necessitate the same level of graphic violence that the first example it's still unavoidable

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Give it to someone new with a fresh take on everything, it's more or less how Star Wars originally was made, it was George Lucas's first big thing.