Guillermo del Toro is no slouch, having been involved in 39 movies, eight TV shows and six video games since the beginning of his career as either a director, writer or producer, but he’s also got something of a reputation for signing on to a number of projects that ultimately end up falling through the cracks of development hell.
Plenty of those efforts did eventually fall into another pair of hands and make it onto the screen, a list that includes Tarzan, Beauty and the Beast, Thor, Justice League Dark, Halo, Haunted Mansion and Pan, but others weren’t so lucky. Hellboy III is the most obvious, but don’t forget about At the Mountains of Madness, Fantastic Voyage, The Wind in the Willows, Mephisto’s Bridge and many more.
In a social media exchange with a fan, the two-time Academy Award winner revealed the amount of time he’d spent working on things that he eventually dropped out of, and it’s eye-opening to say the least.
Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is coming this December, with the first trailer generating a lot of buzz, and the mysterious thriller marks his first effort behind the camera since The Shape of Water became a box office and awards season favorite, while Netflix anthology series Cabinet of Curiosities is currently in production. Let’s hope it marks the start of a prolific new era, because it’s long since reached the stage where seeing his name attached to a feature length or episodic effort is no guarantee it’ll happen.
