Between Pacific Rim, Rise of the Guardians, Pinocchio and the Incredible Hulk television pilot, Guillermo del Toro has a lot of irons in the fire. (Of course, when doesn't he?) But as soon as he finishes the final edit of his giant-monsters-versus-giant-robots epic, he plans to turn his attention to yet another project: the FX pilot based on his vampire-novel trilogy The Strain.

"Well, [co-author] Chuck Hogan and I are gonna write the pilot together, and we’re starting already to cast," del Toro tells Collider. "In other words, we’re out to actors with the books and me meeting them and we’re starting to, with a little bit of luck, get a very interesting cast for the series. The pilot has been greenlit, which means that it’s not an ‘if’ but a ‘when,’ we’re gonna shoot it next year. It will shoot very likely in Toronto."

De Toro also spoke with MTV Geek about the project, noting that if they get to the pilot script and it gets the go-ahead from FX, the series would debut in 2014.

"Basically I’m trying to do what I do in my movies which is to show it as a reality, but as a reality that is stylized," del Toro said. "It’s not like CSI or The Wire, it’s real but it feels a little stylized. But the way the camera work will be is very realistic. We want to keep the camera very documentary even if the look of the show is not. The look of the show is very designed. The style of the camera and the storytelling will be very loose. It will evolve from that feel of reality, and little by little we want to evolve into more stylish, horror feel that requires smoother camera moves, more suspense and atmosphere-driven moments so it will be a mixture. I don’t think that mixture has been seen a lot on TV."

Speaking of things not usually seen on TV, del Toro also addressed the issue of violence, gore and how they will be portrayed on the show. "Well it will certainly be brutal," he said. "We are a TV show, we are restrained about how much human gore we can show, but we will be pretty brutal. If you read the novels and you read the comic, there are very, very harrowing human dynamics in the 3 books. Because the vampires in the books, the first people they want to kill are the people they love, so that’s gonna be pretty hardcore."