Some days, it seems like the hardest working man in Hollywood today is Guillermo Del Toro. He has quite the slate on his hands with a Hulk TV show, ‘Haunted Mansion’, ‘Pinnochio’, ‘The Strain’, ‘Heaven Sent’, and much more all on the list. However, after completing his ‘Pacific Rim’ commitments, none of those other projects are up next for the filmmaker.
According to Deadline, Del Toro has committed to directing horror movie ‘Crimson Peak’ next. The director describes the film as “a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story. It will allow me to play with the conventions of the genre I know and love, and at the same time subvert the old rules.”
In terms of inspiration for this film, Del Toro looked to ‘The Haunting’, ‘The Innocents’, and other horror films he grew up watching so that he can give audiences something different than the horror movies that are cranked out these days. In an interview, he says the following about ‘Crimson Peak’ and how he’s planning on approaching it:
“I’ve always tried to make big-sized horror movies like the ones I grew up watching. Films like ‘The Omen’, ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Shining’, the latter of which is another Mount Everest of the haunted house movie. I loved the way that Kubrick had such control over the big sets he used, and how much big production value there was. I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback.”
Del Toro will make ‘Crimson Peak’ for Legendary Pictures, the company that backed ‘Pacific Rim’, and will be released through Warner Bros. Currently, the film is undergoing a rewrite with writer Lucinda Coxon, who recently adapted the novel ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ for BBC, and is shooting for an early 2014 production start.
