Not long after the news that Guillermo Del Toro’s dream project, “At the Mountains of Madness,” had fallen apart, the filmaker revealed he was mulling over a number of potential projects for the future.
Ideas include ambitious remake plans for Frankenstein, and his own adaptation of the famed Disney attraction, The Haunted Mansion.
For his plans to remake Frankenstein, Del Toro told Total Film, “I’m really not trying to be falsely modest, but I think I need to get better as a director. I don’t think I’m ready yet.
“The novel is so complex and the ideal way of doing Frankenstein would be as a four, five part gigantic miniseries…from a storytelling point of view, the movie I’m planning is a very daring and perhaps a little crazy track.”
Among the many incarnations of Frankenstein, it was done back in the ‘70’s as a four hour TV movie, and maybe Del Toro could do it as a mini-series (would be great for HBO), or if horror films become more epic with The Stand being planned as a three part feature, perhaps he can do his Frankenstein in a similar fashion as well.
For a profile in The New Yorker, writer Daniel Zalewski went to Del Toro’s workshop and saw the plans for the monster. While one of Del Toro’s effects people was crafting the monster’s head, the director told him, “It needs to go beyond a good sculpture. You need to really believe.”
Now before you go groaning about Del Toro making The Haunted Mansion, it isn’t going to be like the Eddie Murphy version. Del Toro told Total Film it will be “fun, but not in that comedic way – it’s a haunted house movie. It should be really spooky like the mansion!”
The Haunted Mansion script was co-written by Del Toro’s long time screenwriting partner, Matthew Robbins, who co-wrote Steven Spielberg’s Sugarland Express, Corvette Summer, and Dragonslayer with Hal Barwood. (Barwood now writes games for George Lucas.)
Robbins told Creative Screenwriting magazine he first met Del Toro when Matthew was teaching a Sundance screenwriting workshop in Guadalajara.
“I was very impressed with a script he wrote, and I was very impressed with him,” Robbins said. “Pretty soon he was on his way to an American career. We started working together and have been working together ever since.”
Robbins’ work with Del Toro includes Mimic, uncredited work on Hellboy, as well as the screenplay for At the Mountains of Madness, which the director will not give up on.
“If I get to do it, those monsters will be so terrifying,” Del Toro told The New Yorker.
The next Del Toro / Robbins pairing to tide you over until Pacific Rim will be the remake of the ‘70’s TV horror film, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, starring Katie Holmes, which will be in theaters this fall.
