UPDATE: Guillermo Del Toro hit Twitter to clear up a few points about the black & white film we thought was titled Silva. It's actually titled Silver, and won't be his next project. Instead he'll shoot something much smaller next year that will be in English. So there ya go. The original story is below.*
Guillermo Del Toro's run into his share of problems getting big projects off the ground, which is why we didn't see very many films from him for a while. Lately that's changed with Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak coming without much of a wait in-between, but with Pacific Rim 2 on hold Del Toro is taking a break from the studios. He's previously talked about a small, black and white film that he wants to be next, and now we're getting some details on what sounds like one of Del Toro's weirder projects yet.
Del Toro spoke with The Guardian while on the Crimson Peak press run, and he dropped some info on that "small" project which will be titled Silva, a film that has a deeply personal origin for the filmmaker...
“‘Silva,’ which he sees as a black-and-white, low-budget project, was a casualty of the early termination of his film-making career in Mexico; his family fled the country for Toronto after his father was kidnapped and the family paid a ruinous ransom."
Dude. Sounds like someone needs to do a biopic on Del Toro! Anyway, Silva, which is a pretty common Mexican surname, is pretty far-out too as it centers on a masked luchadore (what they call wrestlers in Mexico) fighting the politicians who he learns are all vampires. So it's kind of like They Live meets Lucha Underground, which to me sounds like possibly the greatest thing ever. Del Toro's love of Mexican wrestling has been clear for a while, and he even put a prominent luchadore character in The Strain, which is also about battling vampires. These projects couldn't be related, could they?
So how small is this small movie he's doing? It might actually be pretty big, just much smaller than what Del Toro has been working with lately...
"What I can tell you quite safely is, I don’t intend to keep on doing big, giant Hollywood movies for much longer. ‘Crimson Peak’ is a great permit for me to work on a smaller scale. I mean, it’s big for a drama, but it’s a much smaller undertaking than ‘Pacific Rim’ or ‘Hellboy.’ I can’t say which ones, but I’ve been offered gigantic movies in the superhero genre, but I don’t like the superheroes that are… nice. I like the dark ones, so ‘Blade’ and ‘Hellboy’ were right for me. The mechanics of action only interest me when it’s a universe very, very close to my heart, which ‘Pacific Rim’ is, and I love it. I’m not going to pursue action movies or superhero movies at all any more. I hope I can go back to doing the smaller, weirder ones."
Del Toro already dropped out of that Justice League Dark movie, so that's one superhero movie off the table. There probably won't be any movement on Hellboy 3, either, despite he and Ron Perlman's desire to do it.
Basically, don't expect to see a ton of high-priced studio films from Del Toro unless they're set in the Pacific Rim universe. As for that sequel, he's just waiting for the go-ahead...
To answer all tweets re: PAC RIM 2: Budget ready. Awaiting script from John Spaihts. Then is up to the studios to give it a green light.
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 11, 2015
2 Tweets: To clarify some confusion in the NYT article: I discussed a possible future wrestler film called "Silver" not "Silva" (my accent)
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 12, 2015
Tweet 2: My next project is NOT that movie. We shoot next year and it's a smaller film in English.
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 12, 2015
