No Star Wars For Guillermo Del Toro

[MetalMagpie]

I'd actually love to see Del Toro do a take on Star Wars. He does dark fantasy better than most, and KOTOR 2 showed that there is a huge amount of mileage to be had in exploring the dark, Lovecraftian-esque areas of the Star Wars universe.

But not if you want a big summer blockbuster that all the kids can go see. The original trilogy are all rated U and two out of three of the prequels are PG. The majority of the films Del Toro has directed are rated at least 15 (with only the Hellboy films at 12A). Much as I'm a fan of dark fantasy, releasing a Star Wars film with a rating that excludes kids seems a bit mean (and not very in the spirit of Disney).

 

[GameChanger]

Guillermo Del Toro. I have heard enough.

I think you are becoming one of my favorite directors of all time and I hereby will devote support to you, and your films.
Get me a Hellboy III, and get me a Mountains of Madness adaptation. I am going to buy all your films ten times. I will do it.


I love you big time, do you have a donation page?

 

[The Great JT]

INb4 Vader NOOOOOO.avi

Aw, now I gotta do this!

Pity and he had such a promising career.

"Had" implies his career was/is over. Mountains comes out, he'll be one of the most sought-after directors of all time.

Besides, would YOU want to direct a Star Wars movie, knowing how hated the series has become in the last ~11 years?

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Besides, would YOU want to direct a Star Wars movie, knowing how hated the series has become in the last ~11 years?

That's been my viewpoint on this as well.

This project has potential career killer written all over it. Folks are going to go into this movie with every bit of bile and hatred built up from the prequels combined with an inherent distrust of Disney just looking for a reason to hate it.

I won't say that's fair or right, nor will I say the movie is a guaranteed failure, after all it's not a dissimilar situation to what happened when Batman Begins hit theatres.

But it's an uphill battle and I for one wouldn't want to hitch my horse to that wagon just yet.

 

[Jamous]

This doesn't really matter to me unless ATMoM drops. I desperately want me some more Lovecraftian del Toro. It's just too good. Looking very much forward to Pacific Rim in the mean time.

 

[bificommander]

Plus, Del Toro is on record as only really liking monsters - "I like the weird ones, frankly," he said in a Playlist interview

Yes, that much was obvious in Hellboy 2. The protagonists were a bunch of misanthropes who'd cry when someone or something that wasn't a regular human stubbed it's toe, while whiping their asses with the corpses of their recently murdered human teammates or civilians. Anti-heroes are fine, but the only vaguely save-the-people scene we got was where hellboy saves a baby, presumably because the baby was to young to be able to say intolerant things to our 'heroes'. So we end up with a baby in an antique-looking carriage in peril, a scene frist used in 'Battleship Potemkin' in 1925, homaged to in 'The Untouchables' and which has no place being played straight in the 21st century if you want me to take the movie seriously.

So yeah, not terribly sad that he won't be doing Star Wars, as it holds about the same interest in me as Hellboy 1 did: Didn't set my world on fire, but entertaining enough.

 

[Pinkamena]

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.

Problem is that not nearly enough people have heard of del Toro, and even less would want to pitch money into this project. You really need a studio or some other party with large amounts of cash for this to work. That being said, I really, REALLY hope he'll get to make that movie on his own terms some day.