Guillermo Del Toro has added so many projects to his wish list of cool things that he’d like to make that keeping up with every movie he’s attached to make and what order he’s supposed to make them in could be a full time job. But, despite the fact that this list is ever-expanding and ever-changing, it is sometimes possible to know for sure what movie he’s going to be doing next, and Deadline has a report that seems to solidify the fact that the next project he actually sits down and completes is going to be a ghost story called Crimson Peak.
Backed by Legendary Pictures, Crimson Peak comes from a script that Del Toro wrote with his frequent collaborator Matthew Robbins. The current plan is for the director to work through another rewrite alongside Lucinda Coxon, and then start production on the film sometime in early 2014. This gives him plenty of time to wrap up his publicity work for Pacific Rim and also film a pilot for an FX show called The Strain, to which he is already committed.
What do we know about Crimson Peak so far? We know that it’s a story Del Toro has described as being very set-oriented, and one that is supposed to work in the conventions of the ghost story genre, but give them a modern twist. The director says that he’s using this project as an opportunity to honor some of his favorite horror movies of the past, including “Robert Wise’s The Haunting, which was a big movie, beautifully directed, with the house built magnificently. And the other grand daddy is Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. I’ve always tried to make big-sized horror movies like the ones I grew up watching.”
When speaking further about its inspirations, Del Toro made Crimson Peak sound even more appealing by saying, “I loved the way that Kubrick had such control over the big sets he used (in The Shining), 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.”
Sounds like a very promising project, and a welcome change of pace from the latest crop of horror movies that Hollywood has been giving us. We’ve still got quite a bit of time before this one gets underway though, so, like with anything involving Guillermo Del Toro, chances are plans could change between now and when cameras actually start to roll. Let’s just tuck this one away in the back of our minds and avoid getting too excited about it for now. Maybe in a year if news around it starts to pick up, then we can bust out the champagne.