7:31 am ET
Jul 3, 2014
Film
Guillermo Del Toro on ‘Pacific Rim 2,’ ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ and More
By Michael Calia
Guillermo Del Toro at the ‘Pacific Rim’ premiere last July in Los Angeles.
Dee Cercone/Everett Collection
Guillermo Del Toro is a busy man.
His new vampire horror series, “The Strain,” will soon premiere on FX, he’s currently in postproduction on the upcoming Gothic horror film “Crimson Peak,” and he starts designing the recently announced “Pacific Rim” sequel in mere weeks.
But that’s not all. The prolific director, producer and writer talked to Speakeasy in a wide-ranging, exclusive telephone interview, touching on what to expect from his plans for the “Pacific Rim” universe, how he thinks “Pacific Rim” compares to that other giant monster movie produced by Legendary Pictures, and whether he hopes that his dream project, a long-gestating adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” will make it to the big screen.
Here’s part one of our interview. Check in soon for part two, which covers “The Strain.”
You’re in a bit of a horror mode right now, between “The Strain” being set to debut and “Crimson Peak” in postproduction. What can audiences expect from the latter?
It’s the first time I’ve tackled an adult story in English. When I had that terrible experience with “Mimic” in 1997, I decided to go for more action-oriented, comic book-oriented things to be done in English, and to do my more personal, my more adult-themed things in Spanish. Up until “Crimson Peak,” it’s been that way. With “Crimson Peak,” it’s the first time I’m able to articulate some adult concerns with a very elegant and sedate and visually rich world because I found great support with Legendary Pictures. Legendary basically has become a home for me, and I made it abundantly clear that “Crimson Peak” wouldn’t be something with cats jumping out at you. It was creepy, and it was eerie, but it was going to play by more idiosyncratic rules than the normal horror movie. And they were completely supportive of it.
With this support from Legendary, do you have any hope that your adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” will be made?
That’s exactly what I discussed with them. I said to them, that’s the movie that I would really love to do one day, and it’s still expensive, it’s still … I think that now, with the way I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic. There’s basically one or two scenes in the book that people don’t remember that are pretty graphic. Namely, for example, the human autopsy that the aliens do, which is a very shocking moment. But I think I can find ways of doing it. We’ll see. It’s certainly a possibility in the future. Legendary was very close to doing it at one point, so I know they love the screenplay. So, we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll happen. It’s certainly one of the movies I would love to do.
Guillermo Del Toro directing on the set of 1997′s ‘Mimic.’
Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection
If it doesn’t work out, what are the chances we see (Lovecraft’s) Cthulhu appear as a kaiju in a “Pacific Rim” movie?
(laughs) Not really. I think there’s a really strong possibility we can do it (“At the Mountains of Madness”) at Legendary because now they are at Universal, and Universal, you may remember, almost greenlit the movie. The fact that we now have two studios together that love the material, and if they support each other, they are risking a lot less. It would be great to do it, but I’ve understood that you don’t plan your career, it just happens.
Without spoiling anything, what can fans expect from “Pacific Rim 2″?
We are three years away, so to spoil anything would be fantastically silly of me. What I can tell you: [screenwriter Zak Penn] and I really went in, we started with [screenwriter Travis Beacham] about a year and a half ago, kicking ideas back and forth. And, admittedly, I said to Zak, let’s keep kicking ideas till we find one that really, really turns the first movie on its ear, so to speak. (…) It was hard to create a world that did not come from a comic book, that had its own mythology, so we had to sacrifice many aspects to be able to cram everything in the first movie. Namely, for example “the Drift” (editor’s note: the neural link between pilots of the giant robots, or jaegers), which was an interesting concept. [Then there was] this portal that ripped a hole into the fabric of our universe, what were the tools they were using? And we came up with a really, really interesting idea. I don’t want to spoil it, but I think at the end of the second movie, people will find out that the two movies stand on their own. They’re very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. But the tenor of the two movies will be quite different.
What can you tell me about the animated “Pacific Rim” series? Do you know which network will carry it?
We are talking about all the possibilities in terms of networks. We’re formulating ideas that are, again, interesting and not the usual route, but the series tackles the stories that happened to pilots working in the Shatterdome (editor’s note: a building where jaegers are built and maintained and pilots train), but also cadets learning how to become pilots. All of this happens prior to the first movie, and it gives you a little more depth into the background of certain characters that will appear in the second movie. So it’s really expanding the material. I was incredibly happy with the comic book series that came about from a graphic novel called “Tales From Year Zero,” and we are continuing the tales for the next three years. So by the time the second movie comes out, you will have probably one year of the animation airing, and you will have three years of the comic book series ongoing, so we are trying for all these things to be canon, to be in the same universe, to not wing anything, so that if anyone … a lot of kids, for example, have discovered “Pacific Rim” through the toys. They come in through the toys, and then they watch the movie, and then they learn this, they learn that through the movie or the comic book series, so we’re trying to make it canon so we can expand the universe. And by the time we come into the second movie, you have a good feel for the world, and we can dedicate ourselves to character and ideas and spectacle.
What did you feel about Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla”? Do you feel like you have to top it?
Well, it’s a very different tone. What is great about Gareth is that he went for a really, an almost-Spielberg shock-and-awe tone that is very different from “Pacific Rim.” The thing is, when you deal with a world that has a single anomaly, meaning you have basically one monster or two battling each other, then you can take a darker tone and be metaphorical. Or when you have a single robot — namely, for example, Brad Bird’s “The Iron Giant” — you can, once again, be more reflective and build deeper into a theme than when you have to … this is a world where giant robots are possible, giant monsters are possible. So the tone has to be … I decided that it had to be more like an adventure movie. I used two analogies that were pretty invisible in the first movie: one was a sports movie, and the other was a western. I tried to bring characterization on the move. My main two characters, both [Charlie Hunnam] and [Rinko Kikuchi], play characters that have less lines than any other characters in the movie almost. They talk very little. You know them by the way they behave, the way they do and do not. In “Godzilla,” what was great is that you had this Spielbergian sense of scope and adventure, and a much darker tone. So, they don’t intersect tonally at all.
Charlie Hunnam, left, and Rinko Kikuchi in ‘Pacific Rim.’
Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
Do you plan on expanding the cast and adding new characters in “Pacific Rim 2″?
I’m hoping to bring the same idea I had in the first movie, that was to make it multicultural and humanistic as much as possible, to make characters from many nationalities or gender, to make them equal in the scope of the adventure, in the day-to-day of the adventure. So, we’re bringing a few characters that are new and hopefully doing good work managing those that survived the first movie. (laughs)
When do you expect production to start on “Pacific Rim 2″?
I start designing in six weeks. It takes me nine months to design a movie like that. People see the movie, and they have to see that we designed everything in the movie, from ID cards or patches, pamphlets, posters, signs, sets. I start with a core team for about six months designing the jaegers and the kaiju, you know, so we know how many kaiju, how many jaegers. We are creating some new jaegers and a lot of new kaiju. We start [designing the production] in August.
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