Guillermo Del Toro is one of the busiest men in Hollywood. He always has a full slate of projects that never seems to dwindle. The next thing we’ll see from the director is ‘Pacific Rim’, which opens this summer, but late last year, he announced that his follow-up to the giant robots and monsters movie would be the horror film, ‘Crimson Peak’. Naturally, fans are quite curious about what’s coming immediately next for Del Toro, but the crowd at WonderCon couldn’t overlook the DC Comics team-up film that he’s in the works that was once known as ‘Heaven Sent’.
Since that news dropped five months ago, the title has changed to ‘Dark Universe’, it was revealed that the filmmaker was waiting for the writer to be free before moving forward, and we learned that the team would include the company’s darker characters like Swamp Thing, Deadman, The Spectre, Constantine, and Zatanna. Then, in Anaheim over the weekend, he revealed the latest update.
/Film tells us that during his panel at the con, Del Toro shared that there has been some progress made on film, specifically with the story structure. Though writing hasn’t’ started yet, he has a pretty good idea where the story is heading:
“On ‘Justice League Dark’, or ‘Dark Universe’, what we’re doing is we finished the bible. Then we’re going to start the screenplay with a writer we hope we can announce very soon. What I’m doing is the lead character that guides us through that is Constantine. Blonde. He is basically trying to recruit these guys. On Etrigan, I’m using Jason Blood in the time of Merlin. We get to their origin through the story. We don’t make the origin story at the top. We find it out as they each have mysteries to solve. Swamp Thing is at peace with who he is, but Deadman still needs to figure out who shot him. It’s all woven in. When I was a kid, my two favorite characters in the whole DC Universe were Etrigan and Swamp Thing, so I’m in heaven.”
From that little blurb, we now know a few of the definite key players of the film, but also that an official title has not been decided yet. Hopefully they don’t go with ‘Justice League Dark’ if the regular ‘Justice League’ movie doesn’t come to fruition. Not that ‘Dark Universe’ is much better, but it would make more sense as a title if the other team’s movie didn’t exist.
Additionally, as the report points out, since the script isn’t done yet, this film won’t likely see the light of day for a few years, especially since things like the ‘Pacific Rim’ sequel could be more pressing matters that he would need to attend to.
What do you think about the latest news about ‘Dark Universe’? Are there any of DC’s darker characters that you’d like to see Guillermo Del Toro and this mysterious writer play with in the film? Share your speculations in the comment section.
