15 Facts About Guillermo del Toro

You don't think one of the most imaginative film directors has an unremarkable life, do you?
15 Facts About Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro is an incredible filmmaker, whose movies are some of the weirdest, wildest, and most out-there films – Mimic, Nightmare Alley, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, The Devil’s Backbone, Pacific Rim – and his life has also been pretty wild. 

Raised Catholic, this Mexican director spent much of the ’80s working on special effects, before starting as a director with Cronos. He went on to make Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Shape of Water, not Star Wars, the upcoming thousandth Pinocchio, and Nightmare Alley most recently. He’s co-produced or helped make dozens of kids’ shows and movies you’d never guess including the terrible Rise of the Guardians, inspiration for dozens of Jack Frost AO3 fic. He's also just very weird and cool. He loves monsters the way Judd Apatow loves boner jokes. Man, remember Judd Apatow? We’ll get to him next week. Until then!

Here are some odd and interesting facts about one of the best genre filmmakers of all time… including some movies we almost got.

Guillermo del Toro takes years to sketch out his stories in notebooks

Guillermo del Toro His movies take years to write. Не writes and sketches out concepts by hand in small black notebooks, and only when they're near full does he start making the film in earnest. Не had the Pan's Labyrinth notebook for almost five years before the film was made!

Source: The Guardian

Guillermo Del Toro’s family thought his monsters were worthy of some holy water

Guillermo del Toro His grandmother tried to exorcise him. Del Toro's imagination is Oscar-winning and exorcism-inducing. The notebook he used to draw monsters and write stories in led his grandmother to attempt an exorcism - twice!-including throwing holy water at him, which is maybe why all his religious figures look so scary.

Source: The National

Guillermo del Toro lost Pan’s Labyrinth and a cabbie saved it

Guillermo del Toro Hе lost Pan's Labyrinth. While in London, del Toro lost Pan's Labyrinth- leaving his notebook in the back of a cab he couldn't manage to find the contact info for. The taxi driver found it and hunted him down. Thanks for the nightmares, cabbie!

Guillermo del Toro helped make Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3

Guillermo del Toro не helped make Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3. Those are a bit different than his usual MO. Hey, it's a giant panda at least? Не was the saving grace for the film, coming in when everyone was near giving up and encouraging them to press on and make the film they knew they were making.

Source: Den of Geek

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim 2 was radically different

Guillermo del Toro His Pacific Rim 2 would have included time travel. Del Toro's Pacific Rim 2 had a tech villain who got all his patents from the precursors - the kaiju overlords - revealed to be us thousands of years in the future, come back to colonize past Earth. This is all also the plot of a Doctor Who episode.

Source: The Wrap

Guillermo del Toro almost made Silent Hills, a horror game

Guillermo del Toro не almost made a video game with Hideo Kojima. Silent Hills - a game featuring Norman Reedus, directed by Kojima and with a story by del Toro - was in the works, but after it fell through nothing was left but the critically-acclaimed demo P.T. Though that hasn't stopped del Toro from making Silent Hill jokes, as recently as 2021.

Source: Destructoid

Guillermo del Toro almost made an adaptation of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness

Guillermo del Toro Hе almost filmed H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Del Toro's never made a direct Lovecraft adaptation, despite most of his work being obviously inspired by it. But if it weren't for Prometheus, this film set in the Antarctic would've gotten off the ground - the Alien prequel stole a lot of what it was going to say.

Source: Collider

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