Guillermo del Toro Lists All of His Completed Unproduced Screenplays
Over the years, director Guillermo del Toro has been attached to several projects that never saw the light of day. A lot of these projects came and went and the fans have been excited about a lot of them.
Del Toro recently took to Twitter to share a list of all of the completed unproduced screenplays that he worked on and shared his feelings on how these scripts represent more than a decade of work that he put into developing them and how all of that work is now lost.
It’s actually pretty sad to see all of these exciting projects currently dead or in limbo. Of course, this is just a fraction of the kinds of film projects that have been lost in Hollywood over the years. Every filmmaker has projects they wanted to make that never got the greenlight.
Check out Del Toro’s tweets below:
1/2 SCREENPLAYS I have developed, fully written or co-written that have gone unproduced (so far):
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 26, 2018
THE WITCHES, JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, THE COUNT OF MONTECRISTO, MEPHISTO'S BRIDGE, PACIFIC RIM 2 (very different),
2/2 SECRET PROJECT (UNTITLED), SUPERSTITIOUS, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, HAUNTED MANSION, THE HULK pilot, THE BURIED GIANT, THE COFFIN, DROOD, LIST OF 7 (Mark Frost) and a few others...
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 26, 2018
The thing is- each script takes about a year, so- more than a decade of work lost (in the case of mountains, much more, since we scoiuted and designed etc)
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 26, 2018
Oh, and WIND IN THE WILLOWS (which I loved)
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 26, 2018
To be clear these screenplays are WRITTEN, done. Each of them took months or years of my life. Meetings, synopsis, beat sheets and were all written, features- 90-130 pages each.
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 26, 2018
These are not "maybes" or "wish list" items. They are done.
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 26, 2018
I’ll offer a brief rundown of info for each of the projects:
The Witches was being developed with producers Robert Zemeckis and Alfonso Cuarón, and it was going to be an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches.
Justice League Dark was the DC film set up at Warner Bros. that would have focused on the supernatural side of the DC universe and characters like Swamp Thing, the Demon, and Constantine.
Beauty and the Beast was set up at Warner Bros. before Disney decided to make the live-action adaptation of the their animated film.
At the Mountains of Madness is the adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic story that fans have been wanting to see since Del Toro first announced he was working on it! The film would have followed “a National Geographic special on a crew that disappeared in an exploration mission.” The project was shut down by Universal because they didn’t want to make a big-budget R-rated horror film.
Fantastic Voyage was going to be made in collaboration with James Cameron. David Goyer helped write the script.
The Coffin is also a film that James Cameron was attached to. It was said to be a modern adaptation of the classic Frankenstein story.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a passion project that Del Toro has been trying to get off the ground for decades, and it was said to be a steampunk style film set in the wild west.
Mephisto’s Bridge is an adaptation of the Christopher Fowler novel Spanky. It tells story of a Faustian pact between a thwarted yuppie and the ancient demon Spanky, who wants in exchange for wealth and status not his soul, but his body.
Pacific Rim 2 would have been a different movie than the one we got from director Steven S. DeKnight. Del Toro has different plans but dropped out to make The Shape of Water, which was obviously a good move.
Superstitious doesn’t have may details.
Nightmare Alley would have been film noir-style film that takes place at a carnival.
Haunted Mansion was a big Disney project that got an exciting announcement at Comic-Con back in 2010. It would have given us a darker and scarier take on the classic Disneyland theme park attraction. At one point Ryan Gosling was in talks to star and then we just stopped hearing news about it.
The Hulk TV pilot was set up at ABC in 2010. I was excited to see how Del Toro would handle the Hulk, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
The Buried Giant would have been an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2015 novel. The story is set after the death of King Arthur, and it focused on a strange mist that caused mass amnesia throughout the land. An elderly British couple set off to visit their son, whom they haven't seen in years. And because of the amnesia they can scarcely remember anything about him.
Drood was an adaptation of Dan Simmons’s novel and is based on the life of Charles Dickens.
The List of Seven was an adaptation of Mark Frost’s 1993 occult murder mystery novel. The story follows Arthur Conan Doyle as he joins forces with special agent Jack Sparks to pursue a deadly cabal of Victorian satanists known as the Dark Brotherhood.
The Wind in the Willows was going to be a live-action and CG animated hybrid adaptation of the classic children’s book. Apparently Disney was looking to do some silly stuff with it, so Del Toro walked away.
Out of all of these projects, what ones would you have liked to see get made the most? I still hope there’s a chance that one day Del Toro will get to make his At The Mountains of Madness movie!