Crimson Peak director Guillermo del Toro began the Legendary Studios panel at Comic Con by requesting the impossible. “Can I ask a favor?” the filmmaker said to the audience on Saturday afternoon. “When Tom Hiddleston comes out, ignore him.”
He then went on to detail his latest film, Crimon Peak. Del Toro said he was inspired by his two children to write a more progressive story, but that the film was still a Gothic romance, the genre he’s closely associated with. “Don’t expect a reinvention where the house turns out to be a spaceship or it’s all a TV show”, he told the audience. “It’s a straight gothic romance. But some of the gender roles are a little more liberated.”
“I have two daughters”, he said, “and there is a secret gender war.”
Del Toro told the crowd that “you don’t have to agree, but I think [Crimson Peak] is the most beautiful movie I have ever made” just before the lights went down for the film’s atmospheric trailer.
Hiddleston, who plays Mia Wasikowska’s enigmatic love interest, played the straight man to Del Toro on the panel: asked about his favourite part of the film’s elaborate set, he said there had plenty of attention to detail. “When you trod on the floorboards, the clay underneath would seep”, Hiddleston recalled. “I was actually very sad when they had to tear it down.”
“I like the bathroom”, Del Toro replied.
The actors on the panel, including Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain, said Del Toro (who co-wrote the script, as well) had provided them all with elaborate biographies. “It was a 10-page life story with my star sign and my date of birth and the secrets that I don’t want to tell anyone and a horrible time I had with my aunt when I was 13”, Hiddleston said. “And that kind of detail is what you should have with every character, every time you play.
“I’ve never been teased by a director so much before in my life”, he added.
“We’re like twins!” said Del Toro
“The Danny Devito film?” asked Chastain.
Crimson Peak is due for release in October.
