It’s always sad when one of our favorite creators leaves an exciting project. Like when Lord & Miller left Solo, or Edgar Wright left Ant-Man. However, that’s to be expected with popular filmmakers. They’ve got a lot going on, after all. One such case is Oscar-winner Guillermo Del Toro. The Shape of Water director has had a lot of exciting projects in the past that, sadly, never made it to the big screen. Because we enjoy being sad, we rehashed some of those canceled ideas, ranking them in order of which we’d most like to see. So get ready to be disappointed at what never was, film fans. Here are the Top 10 Guillermo Del Toro Cancelled Projects Ranked
The Wind In The Willows
You might recognize The Wind in the Willows from the animated Disney short released in the late forties. If not, the story is basically an anthropomorphic comedy set in turn-of-the-century England. Classic characters like Thaddeus Toad and Angus MacBadger come from this story, and though they are most commonly thought of as cartoon characters, Del Toro’s project would’ve seen them as CGI characters in a real world. It would’ve been awesome to see Del Toro take on this kind of grounded fairy-tale, especially with his unique vision for character design. Still, we suppose there are more projects closer to Del Toro’s usual films that we’d rather see. Plus, after Shape of Water, seeing part human, part animal creatures in another Del Toro film would’ve been… weird.
Superstitious
R.L. Stine isn’t doing badly in Hollywood by any stretch of the imagination. His Goosebumps series is pulling in respectable box-office numbers, and he’s got an adaptation of his Fear Street series on its way to theaters. However, we’d venture a guess that he was still a little disappointed when Del Toro’s adaptation of his book Superstitious fell through. The first adult novel Stine had done after Goosebumps, Superstitious follows a woman starting to suspect her new husband may be something less than human, and far more capable of evil. There would’ve been some great opportunities for demonic monsters in this film, which makes it a shame Del Toro couldn’t make it.
Hellboy III
This movie should come as no surprise on this list. However, many may have ranked it a lot higher. Well, while we are disappointed that Guillermo Del Toro will never complete his Hellboy trilogy, we can take comfort in the fact that Hellboy’s time on screen is hardly done.
Not only are we getting a new Hellboy movie coming out this April, there’s a possibility that it might actually lead to a Hellboy cinematic universe. At least, if Hellboy creator Mike Mignola gets his way. So even though the sting of never seeing Ron Perlman’s Anung Un Rama complete his cinematic journey will never really leave us, we can at least take solace in the new possibilities that lie ahead.
Fantastic Voyage
The 1966 film Fantastic Voyage redefined adventure for cinematic audiences with its tale of shrunken heroes inside a brain. And though the film did succeed in bringing a Jules Verne-style wonder back to public consciousness, the years that have passed have relegated the movie and its plot to the “classics” category. That’s why it would’ve been so cool to see Del Toro reboot the film for a modern audience. Nobody quite brings pulpy adventure and science fiction to life like GDT, as he’s proven time and time again. Still, we think the film deserves an update even without Del Toro’s involvement, perhaps with a person like Denis Villeneuve in the director’s chair. Or this up-and-coming director named J.J. Abrams. We see a lot of potential in that guy.
Drood
But pulp isn’t the only thing Del Toro exceeds at. As we saw in his 2015 film Crimson Peak, Del Toro also has a talent for Gothic Fantasy. That’s what would have made him perfect to adapt the fantastic historical thriller Drood. Based on the Dan Simmons novel of the same name, Drood follows Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, as he navigates the mad and mystic underworld of Dickens’s London.
Drood is a substantive, engrossing thriller story, and it deserves to come alive in live-action. Even though we know that Del Toro’s film version is dead, we’re still hoping that someone would give him the money and rights to bring the story to TV.
Looking at you HBO.
The Witches
Whether you recognize The Witches from the classic Roald Dahl book or the 1990 Angelica Huston film, you know just how fun and creepy the story is. And since fun and creepy are Guillermo Del Toro’s middle names, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that he was once assigned to adapting the story for film. Not only would this movie have been great coming from Del Toro, it probably would’ve stuck a little closer to the darkness of the original book. Don’t get us wrong, we love the Angelica Huston version, but we definitely get the sense that it was Disney-fied.
Justice League Dark
There are very few superhero stories that wouldn’t benefit from Guillermo Del Toro’s vision. Blade II and Hellboy are proof positive of this. However, there was one superhero story, in particular, that was perfect for GDT, and it was a shame that it never got made. That film was Justice League Dark. Justice League Dark, as you might know from DC Comics, is the team of DC superheroes that deal with the weirder side of DC Comics lore. Iconic team members are folks like John Constantine, Zatanna, and Swamp Thing. We know we said we were done with darkness after Batman v. Superman, but we’d make an exception for this one.
The Hobbit
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy will go down in history. It is one of the most epic, beautiful cinematic journeys in the history of film. But his Hobbit? Not so much. That makes it all the sadder that Del Toro was going to direct The Hobbit before Jackson came on.
According to Del Toro, he had gone as far as to scout out filming locations and do some character design. We would’ve loved Del Toro’s vision applied to Tolkien’s mythology, but apparently the movie gods didn’t want us to have it. And for that, we curse them.
At The Mountains Of Madness
Speaking of cursing gods, most fans will already recognize the influence H.P. Lovecraft has on Guillermo Del Toro’s work. For fans who love the Lovecraftian side of things, it’s heartbreaking to hear that Del Toro almost made a Lovecraft film. At the Mountains of Madness, based on the Lovecraft story of the same name, would have given Del Toro the opportunity to play in the Great Old Ones’s sandbox, and it’s kind of depressing that it never got off the ground. Still, we can hold out hope. Nobody else has approached the project, after all.
Haunted Mansion
The Haunted Mansion has always been one of the most fun, different parts of Disney’s canon. So, when a redo of the controversial Eddie Murphy movie was announced, fans were excited. But when fans found out it was Del Toro on board to direct, their excitement went through the roof. However, that excitement would die not long after, with Del Toro exiting the project last year. Out of every item on this list, we want this decision to be reversed the most. The fun spookiness of the classic Disney attraction combined with Del Toro’s unique style and very human monsters could make this an absolutely smashing success with audiences and critics alike.
Which abandoned Guillermo Del Toro project are you most sad about? Did we leave any off this list that should’ve been on? Let us know in the comments section below!
