For all the time he's devoted to making films and TV series, Guillermo del Toro has spent many years writing screenplays for projects that never reached the screen.Self-described "Film buff" and "Godzilla fan" @KorgerKor tweeted at several filmmakers, asking, "Just curious, how many screenplays you guys written for movies that never got made?" Among the replies they received were del Toro's, reading, "By my count I have written or co-written around 33 screenplay features. 2-3 made by others, 11 made by me (Pinocchio in progress) so- about 20 screenplays not filmed. Each takes 6-10 months of work, so, roughly 16 years gone. Just experience and skill improvement."
As prolific as the Oscar-winning del Toro is as a writer, director and/or producer, he's infamously worked on several movies and TV show that never made it past pre-production. His list of unrealized projects even has its own Wikipedia page, with entries that include Hellboy 3, a film based on Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction, a Hulk TV series for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a live-action Justice League Dark movie featuring John Constantine, Swamp Thing and Zatanna.
In some cases, a different iteration of the same project came to fruition after del Toro's version fell apart. For example, in the early 2010s, del Toro worked on a live-action Beauty and the Beast retelling with Emma Watson attached to star as Belle. When the project hit a roadblock, the filmmaker gave Watson his blessing to star in Disney's live-action/CG remake of its animated Beauty and the Beast film instead. Similarly, Justin Simien is now directing a new Haunted Mansion movie for Disney while J.J. Abrams is overseeing development on multiple Justice League Dark series for HBO Max.
Netflix and del Toro's upcoming stop-motion animated Pinocchio feature film is one of the rare cases where a project that once seemed doomed to join the list of del Toro's unrealized creations actually ended up happening. The director's next movie, the noir thriller Nightmare Alley, was also something that del Toro spent years struggling to realize before it received a green-light in late 2017.
Searchlight Pictures has Nightmare Alley hitting theaters on Dec. 17, positioning it as one of this year's awards season contenders. After that, del Toro has Pinocchio waiting in the wings, as well as his Netflix horror anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities.
Source: Twitter, via GamesRadar+