Tag: Guillermo del Toro

BATFILMS OF THE FUTURE? The end is near — when the credits roll on “The Dark Knight Rises” this July, it will mark the close of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and the final adventure for Christian Bale as the caped crusader of Gotham City. Warner Bros. executives have made it clear they won’t leave the iconic property sitting on a shelf, however, and a new director and star tandem could be inhabiting Wayne Manor by 2014. But how on earth will any filmmaker follow the work of Nolan and company? Working together, Hero Complex lead writer Geoff Boucher and graphic artist Sean Hartter came up with 15  imaginary Batman reboots — and, yes, they did it with tongue in cheek. Rob Marshall’s “Gotham!”: Oscar-nominated “Chicago” director Rob Marshall  takes the caped crusader into truly new territory: a musical. Yes, that’s right, after Spider-Man’s ...

When nominations were announced this week for the 84th Academy Awards, the most fascinating — and startling — category was animated feature film. “The Adventures of Tintin” – which won the Golden Globe in that category – wasn’t nominated at all. Instead, Gore Verbinski’s old West adventure “Rango” made the list, as did two international entries — “Chico & Rita” and “A Cat in Paris” – that present vibrant adventures with a classic hand-drawn approach. Rounding out the category were two DreamWorks Animation releases, “Puss in Boots” and “Kung Fu Panda 2,” and don’t think for a minute that went over well at the Emeryville headquarters of Pixar. “Cars 2″ didn’t win over critics but there was still hope that it would bring home the automatic Oscar nomination that has become a Pixar tradition. No one was happier about the nominations than Guillermo del Toro, who is ...

An Art Deco Los Angeles theater and a spooky short story are both celebrating their 80th anniversary this year. San Pedro’s Warner Grand Theatre and Rhode Island-born H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness” may have never crossed paths, so to speak, in the days of their 1930s origins, but this weekend the two will be celebrated together at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, haunting its way into Los Angeles for a second year. Kicking off Friday night, the festival is a celebration of the stories by the sci-fi/horror icon and adaptations of his work. This year’s festival will include screenings of short and feature films with many of the filmmakers in attendance, readings by Lovecraft-inspired authors and an exhibit of props and costumes from that timely adaptation of “The Whisperer in Darkness,” which was first published in “Weird Tales” magazine ...

Big breaks rarely happen quite this way. Aspiring filmmaker Troy Nixey submitted his short film “Latchkey’s Lament” to Guillermo del Toro, looking for some guidance; what he got was the opportunity to direct his first feature, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.” An update of the 1973 TV movie, the R-rated  film, co-written by Del Toro and Matthew Robbins, traces what happens when a precocious young girl (Bailee Madison) is sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend (Katie Holmes) and begins to hear strange voices issuing from the basement of the historic home the couple is restoring. The 39-year-old Canadian  recently took time out to discuss the origins of the project with Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre — readers living in Southern California can check out a preview screening of the movie, which opens in ...

If you’re like most people, Bradley Cooper is not necessarily the first actor you might choose to play Lucifer in a grand, epic cinematic telling of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Even Cooper, the handsome leading man perhaps best known for his starring role in the “Hangover” movies, conceded as much during the Legendary Pictures Comic-Con International panel Friday afternoon. But the actor explained that he was excited by the opportunity to depict Lucifer as a sympathetic character — having studied “Paradise Lost” in college, he sees it as an “intimate family story” about two brothers and a father. Of course, that father just happens to be God. Granted, there was not a lot of thinking small on display during the presentation, which, in addition to “Paradise Lost” showcased Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming “Pacific Rim” and Sergei Bodrov’s “The Seventh Son.” Casts ...

Few people in Hollywood understand what the Comic-Con audience wants better than directors Guillermo del Toro and Jon Favreau, a point the two filmmakers proved in a conversation Thursday in the San Diego Convention Center’s Hall H moderated by Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen. Both men came to Comic-Con to promote their own new projects, Del Toro as producer of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” and Favreau as director of “Cowboys and Aliens,” but settled in for a discursive conversation that Del Toro likened to “having milk and cookies with 6,000 of my closest friends.” Here are seven things we learned from their chat: 1) They’re both obsessed with Walt Disney. Each director has a project in development based on classic Disneyland attractions, Favreau’s ”Magic Kingdom” and Del Toro’s ”Haunted Mansion,” and they share a reverence for the animation innovator. “This is a guy that was ...

Guillermo del Toro is alive and well and taking Comic-Con International by storm. By swearing. A lot. The Mexican multi-hyphenate suffered a back injury and was forced to miss a preview night appearance Wednesday for the announcement of a new comic book based on his vampire novels with Chuck Hogan, “The Strain.” But he was his usual spirited self Thursday afternoon at the FilmDistrict panel in the San Diego Convention Center’s 6,500 seat Hall H, participating in a lively discussion with Danish writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn that was possibly the deepest conversation to ever transpire in the venue. “I love everything that’s deformed because that’s beautiful to me,” Del Toro said in response to a question posed by a fan about what the filmmaker, touting the release of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” which he co-wrote and produced, most ...

A filmmaker, a rock star and a romance novelist–Guillermo del Toro , Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and “House of Night” author P.C. Cast–launched their first comic books at Comic-Con International in San Diego on Wednesday night. The Dark Horse Entertainment booth was swarmed during Comic-Con’s preview night for industry and press,  as the independent comic book publisher announced a diverse slate of fall titles. “The Strain,” the first book of the vampire trilogy by Del Toro and novelist Chuck Hogan, is being adapted by Eisner Award–winning comic book writer David Lapham (“Kull: The Hate Witch,” “Stray Bullets”) and artist Mike Huddleston (“Butcher Baker,” “The Coffin”). Over eight issues, the comic will lay out the first chapter of the “Hellboy” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” director’s novel about a plane that goes dark on the runway at JFK, sparking fears of ...

Guillermo del Toro is a man of varied pop cultural interests — obscure Italian horror films, classic Disney animation and the FX sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (or so says “Sunny’s” star, Charlie Day). Del Toro has officially tapped Day for his new film, “Pacific Rim,” an aliens vs. robots saga set to start production in Toronto this fall. As a lovably dense Philly dive bar co-owner named Charlie on “Sunny,” Day takes out the pub’s trash and checks its rodent traps, an image that inspired Del Toro to cast him, improbably, as a scientist. “There was one specific episode [Del Toro] saw in which I was shellshocked about killing a bunch of rats and it made him think about something the character does in the movie,” said Day. Del Toro’s “big tentpole, giant, massive monster movie,” as Day ...

Guillermo Del Toro has not had an easy time bringing his dream project, an elaborate big-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” to the multiplex. The filmmaker has spent years on the movie, which failed to receive a green light from Universal earlier this year after the studio had concerns about the cost of a project that was likely to receive an R rating for the intensity of its chills. But Del Toro is optimistic that he might yet figure out a way to mount the story of a scientific expedition to Antarctica that yields unearthly finds. “I’m not giving up,” the Oscar winner said, speaking by phone recently from Canada where he’s readying his next directorial effort, the creature feature “Pacific Rim.” ” ‘Mountains of Madness’ has been with me for 13, 14 years and I ...