It’s a side of Hollywood audiences don’t see, but the reality of most TV pilot and film scripts is that they don’t get off the ground. They might be in development for years, they might be rewritten, sold to different studios and cast members might even be lined up, but the rug can still be pulled from under the project at any moment.
Last year’s Best Picture and Best Director Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro is in about the best position imaginable to get a script produced, but even he has some 17 projects that remain just a stack of papers.
“To be clear these screenplays are WRITTEN, done. Each of them took months or years of my life. Meetings, synopsis, beat sheets and were all written, features- 90-130 pages each,” The Shape of Water filmmaker tweeted of them.
“These are not ‘maybes’ or ‘wish list’ items. They are done.”
The list is as follows:
The Witches
Justice League Dark
Beauty and the Beast
At the Mountains of Madness
Fantastic Voyage
The Count of Monte Cristo
Mephisto’s Bridge
Pacific Rim 2 (”very different”)
Secret project (untitled)
Superstitious
Nightmare Alley
Haunted Mansion
The Hulk pilot
The Buried Giant
The Coffin
Drood
List of 7 (”Mark Frost”)
The Wind in the Willows (”which I loved”)
“And a few others,” del Toro noted.
It’s not the worst problem in the world – the director is unlikely to find himself in a position where he has no projects in the works given his success and artistry – but rather the list was intended to answer “why you have to keep several projects alive.
“Like, right now, active, alive, are Pinocchio, Buried Giant, Nightmare Alley and Fantastic Voyage,” he explained.
“The thing is – each script takes about a year, so more than a decade of work lost (in the case of Mountains, much more, since we scouted and designed etc).”
With 1.6 million Twitter followers, del Toro may be hoping that this very public reminder of all the screenplays he has in his war chest will move a producer to pick one of them back up.
The projects may be more than a “wish list” to del Toro, but they certainly served as one to his fans.
“Oh my goodness I would have loved to have seen literally all of these,” one replied.
An adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and a reimagining of Beauty and the Beast seemed most craved, with another fan adding: “I would fight seven bears in a row with my hands for a GDT Count of Monte Cristo.”
