Every Unmade Guillermo del Toro Movie (& Why They Were Canceled)

Guillermo del Toro has revealed no less than 17 movie ideas which he developed into full-blown screenplays that were never produced into films. The Oscar-winning storyteller behind Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water has delivered more than his fair share of beloved films over the years, along with a handful of hit TV series (ranging from Netflix's Trollhunters to FX's The Strain). At the same time, however, del Toro is somewhat infamous for working on far more projects that never see the light of day than movies that actually get produced and released.

To be fair, there have been certain occasions where del Toro has ultimately ed his script and pre-production work onto another director to carry a project across the finish line (as happened on The Hobbit movies) - and on even rarer occasions, his long-developing ventures have suddenly come roaring back to life after finally getting the funding they need (see: his stop-motion Pinocchio, which Netflix is now backing). Nevertheless, the filmmaker himself posted about no less than 17 of his canceled movie ideas to his Twitter this week; and we're going to rundown each and every one of them.

This Page: The Witches, Justice League Dark & Beauty and the Beast
Page 2: Fantastic Voyage, Mountains of Madness & Pacific Rim 2
Page 3: The Hulk, Haunted Mansion & Wind in the Willows

The Witches

A film adaptation of Roald Dahl's fantasy/horror novel for children (which was previously brought to the big screen by The Witches was developed as a stop-motion animated film by del Toro back in 2008. While del Toro originally wanted his good friend and fellow Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón to helm the project, he later lined up to direct the movie himself (with Cuarón producing). Sadly, the film simply never got picked up by a studio - though, Robert Zemeckis is currently working on a live-action adaptation of The Witches for Warner Bros. that del Toro and Cuarón are credited as executive producers on.

Justice League Dark

About four years after his sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army hit theaters in 2008, del Toro set to work on another supernatural horror-driven comic book movie in the form of Justice League Dark. The film was developed under the working title Dark Universe and would have featured characters like John Constantine, Swamp Thing, and Zatanna. However, due in no small part to the ever-changing trajectory of Warner Bros.' DC/Vertigo movie universe at the time (the more things change...), the project kept being pushed back until del Toro formally stepped away around mid-2015. Directors like Andy Muschietti (IT) and Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) have since circled the project, but the film has yet to come to fruition.

Beauty and the Beast

Nearly two years before Disney set to work on their live-action Beauty and the Beast retelling starring Emma Watson, del Toro was developing his own version of the "Tale as Old as Time" that Watson was attached to star in. The film had two reported working titles (Beauty and Beast) and was based on a script that del Toro cowrote with Mr Selfridge creator Andrew Davies. Unfortunately, with Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast picking up speed and his own retelling struggling to land a green-light, del Toro eventually stepped away from the project in mid-2014 - though, he also gave Watson his blessing to go ahead and star in the Disney version, instead.

Page 2 of 3: Fantastic Voyage, Mountains of Madness & Pacific Rim 2

At the Mountains of Madness

One of del Toro's more famous ion projects, even with a PG-13 rating), his efforts sadly didn't pan out.

Fantastic Voyage

A remake of the 1966 sci-fi adventure, Fantastic Voyage had been in development for years before del Toro entered talks to direct and cowrite the film (with his Blade II collaborator David S. Goyer), back in early 2016. For much of the past twelve months, Fantastic Voyage was expected to serve as del Toro's followup to his Best Picture Oscar-winner The Shape of Water and seemed to be on-course to start production by the end of 2018. For reasons that are not entirely clear right now (though budget may well be responsible), the film has been pushed to the back-burner and del Toro is moving forward with his stop-motion Pinocchio at Netflix in the meantime.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo was a project that del Toro spoke about publicly back in early 2009, then later wrote about in his 2013 book Cabinet of Curiosities. An adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic adventure and revenge tale, del Toro has described his Count of Montre Cristo script (which he cowrote with Kit Carson and Matthew Robbins from 1993-1998) as “a kind of steampunk, gothic western” and revealed that he wrote a fair chunk of it while his father was kidnapped and held ransom for 72 days back in 1997, so "it's of a lot of rage". Interestingly, the project is titled The Left Hand of Darkness (no connection to Ursula K. Le Guin's novel of the same name) and, according to del Toro, came very close to being financed by Legendary before they ed forces with him on Crimson Peak instead, a few years back.

Mephisto's Bridge

A big screen adaptation of Christopher Fowler's novel Spanky, Mephisto's Bridge is a Faustian tale about a yuppie who makes a deal with an ancient demon named Spanky that (spoiler?) doesn't work out the way he planned. The project entered development back in 1994 (the year that Fowler's book was originally published) and, according to Fowler, very nearly went into production with del Toro at the helm in the mid-2000s. The latter ultimately ed on the project to go make Hellboy II instead (after being offered a sizable payday for the sequel), but still got Fowler's blessing to use his character designs for the film on other movies. In fact, the design for The Angel of Death in Hellboy II was based on del Toro's concept art for Spanky (specifically, its many-eyed wings).

Pacific Rim 2 (del Toro's version)

Although a Pacific Rim sequel (Charlie Day's Newt becoming something of a villain), despite being otherwise different from what the filmmaker was planning, by the look of it.

Superstitious

This is perhaps the most mysterious of del Toro's unmade movies, simply because... well, the filmmaker has seemingly never really spoken about it during an interview. It's possible the project in question is an adaptation of R.L. Stine's 1995 horror novel Superstitious, which tells the tale of a graduate student who marries a handsome professor... only to later suspect him of being a killer, when more and more people that he knows turn up mysteriously dead. There are shades of del Toro's story for Crimson Peak in the book's narrative and Miramax did buy the film rights before the novel was even published in the mid-'90s, but for now that's mostly speculation. Here's hoping del Toro talks about this one in greater detail in the future.

Nightmare Alley

Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley was only announced back in late 2017 and may yet come to fruition. The project is a remake of the 1947 noir film (itself, based on William Lindsay Gresham's novel) that chronicles the rise and fall of a young con artist, after he hooks up with an unscrupulous female mentalist who works for an equally disreputable carnival. Kim Morgan (The Forbidden Room) wrote the script with del Toro and the latter is still tentatively expected to direct the film in the future, perhaps sometime after he finishes production on Pinocchio. This certainly sounds like a project in del Toro's wheelhouse (from its themes about gender to its evocative setting), so here's to hoping he actually gets to make it.