Guillermo del Toro says he’s almost done with live-action movies and will go all-in on animation
Guillermo del Toro only has a few live-action feature films left in him, preferring to focus on animation
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Guillermo del Toro has climbed the heights of gothic horror and thought-provoking monster cinema to nab the Best Director trophy at the Academy Awards, but his days as a live-action director are numbered. Coming off of a Best Animated Picture Oscar win for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the auteur is about ready to pivot to animation full-time, he shared at the Annecy animation festival (via The Hollywood Reporter).
“There are a couple more live-action movies I want to do but not many,” del Toro proclaimed. “After that, I only want to do animation. That’s the plan.”
The filmmaker has been insistent that the medium is not just for kids: “I believe you can make an adult fantasy drama with stop-motion and move people emotionally,” he reiterated at the festival. Blockbuster animated movies like Spider-Verse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Super Mario Bros. help give “a little more latitude, but there are still big fights to be had,” del Toro said. “Animation to me is the purest form of art, and it’s been kidnapped by a bunch of hoodlums. We have to rescue it. [And] I think that we can Trojan-horse a lot of good shit into the animation world.”
The Pan’s Labyrinth director is generally dismissive of “emoji-style” animation where everyone is “happy and sassy and quick,” preferring “to see real life in animation. I actually think it’s urgent. I think it’s urgent to see real life in animation.”
While he is currently working on an animated adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, del Toro by no means has a blank check. “They still say no to me. In the last two months, they said no to five of my projects. So it doesn’t go away. Making movies is eating a sandwich of shit,” he warned the audience. “There’s always shit, just sometimes you get a little more bread with yours. The rate of productivity against your efforts will remain frustratingly difficult, and frustratingly long. And you will always encounter assholes. But have faith in the stories you want to tell and wait until someone wants to buy them.”
19 Comments
Hoodlums? I mean, in the 80s, sure, when every cartoon was a syndication-length toy commercial…
He is discussing about feature length animations. The one shown on the theater. Not about the Saturday Morning Cartoon toy commercial/animation shows.
In context, he’s talking about the handful of companies making “emoji-style” animation where everyone is “happy and sassy and quick.” Gosh, I wonder who he means.
I genuinely don’t get who he’s talking about. Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks? (Illumination and Blue Sky, yeah, I’d probably agree on those two…)Still, he’s really not wrong. There could be so much more diversity in the kinds of animated movies we get. Seriously, no more 2D animation in cinema? And stop-motion, etc? Huh, I guess it really is just dominated by a couple of hoodlums.
Trolls.The movies, not the online assholes.
I love stop motion animation with a passion but there’s an emotional response to traditional hand-drawn animation that matches and possibly even exceeds that of even live action. It’s a crying shame that Richard Williams never got to do a feature fantasy film. Check out this short film he made toward the end of his life. It’s just exquisite:
He did get to make a fantasy feature, but the real story of THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER is in its un-making.
“They still say no to me.”
Wow, they still say not to Guillermo del Toro, even though he’s never had a single financially-successful film in 30 years of filmmaking?
Who better to spearhead a return to less saccharine animation than a guy that almost never actually follows through on any of his announced plans?In related news, I heard George RR Martin recently announced that he intends to soon pivot to entirely writing comic books after just finishing a few more novels.
“…a guy that almost never actually follows through on any of his announced plans?” Del Toro deserves that.It is a shame. He’s got at least half a dozen movies ‘in him’ that he’ll never make – primarily set in his homeland. I knew after Pacific Rim he’d have trouble saying no to Hollywood. He should.
To be fair, Pacific Rim is absolutely a great movie and still very much his style.
Pacific rim was a huge risk and wouldn’t have broke even if not for China. There has never been a movie like it before. Definitely not a sellout move. Hellboy 3 would have been sellout.
Yea, China made it a success. I don’t agree that it was a special movie or even a good movie. I don’t know what you mean about Hellboy 3. It would have been a success and ‘sold out’ big at the box office? Or it would have been a bad movie. People were literally begging del Toro to make another installment. I don’t know if it would have been good. Hellboy 2 was a hard film to follow because it was brilliant. Personally, I think del Toro just generally ‘sold out’. He squandered his talent and his vision. I get it; I can be lazy too that way. You think you have forever and then time catches up with you. Or maybe he let the fame go to his head. Idk. He’s a dreamer. Of the “Three Amigos” (del Toro, Cauron, Inarritu), del Toro seems the least hard working.
From the article:
“They still say no to me. In the last two months, they said no to five
of my projects. So it doesn’t go away. Making movies is eating a
sandwich of shit,”
Doesn’t seem like follow through is his particular problem.
I mean most filmmakers have a lot of projects that don’t get made. It’s the nature of the beast- getting from preproduction and futzing around to a solid green light is where 95% of projects die.
I’d hate to see him give up live action. There’s at least one movie I’ve been hoping he’d make, but I doubt he’ll do it. I adore stop action so I hope he does as much as possible. The regular sort of animation though – just never enjoyed it.
NO! At least not until you’ve finished Mountains of Madness.
I mean he abandoned it that project last I heard, it was too costly/unwieldly. but with that in mind:MAKE IT ANIMATED. GIVE US A MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS ANIMATED FEATURE PLZ
I heard he abandoned that when Prometheus came out as that highly ripped off the plot of Mountains (although no idiot scientists petting snakes in HPL). Maybe another Lovecraft work? Although most of the famous ones have been done already even if poorly.