Guillermo Del Toro Once Wrote A HULK TV Pilot
Guillermo del Toro can't seem to stop working. Though, when your entire career is built around creating fantastical worlds that have existed in your brain since you were a child, it's debatable whether or not "work" even applies as a descriptor to what he does.
That said, even GDT has to deal with the heartbreak of the Hollywood Machine, budgeting limitations, and projects simply falling through for one reason or another. It's a pain, but it's just part of the business. He knows that, yet it doesn't mean del Toro won't feel a tiny tinge of regret for every one of these pictures that never came to pass.
Today, GDT took to Twitter to share a list of scripts he's written that are never going to see the light of day, and there are a few choice lost cuts on there that we're dying to know more about:
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
Secret Project (Untitled)
Superstitious
Nightmare Alley
Haunted Mansion
The Hulk (TV Pilot)
The Buried Giant
The Coffin
Drood
List of 7 (Co-written with Mark Frost!)
Wind in the Willows
I mean, holy shit, where do we even start? At the Mountains of Madness is obviously the most famous abandoned GDT work, as it was even cast and ready to roll at one point with Tom Cruise in the lead. Though we got a Pacific Rim 2 - in the form of this year's Uprising - del Toro goes on to state that his take was a "much different version". Nightmare Alley, his noir remake co-penned with Kim Morgan, has been in development for roughly a year now. The Witches - his adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's nightmare - was a project GDT was co-producing (with Robert Zemeckis writing/directing), and was announced as a recently as this past June!
However, the most eye-catching entry on that list is his pilot for a proposed Hulk series (which Battlestar Galactica's David Eick was set to produce). After doing a little Google digging, it seems GDT had been working on a new iteration of the angry green giant since before The Avengers smashed into theaters (and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hit the airwaves). Speaking with MTV back in 2013, del Toro indicates that the massive success of that iconic superhero team up might have killed the project, as Marvel began re-evaluating the property's true value:
"I met with Jeph Loeb after Avengers, but after that meeting, there's been complete radio silence on the show. It's very frustrating for me and for the fans that we don't know. I haven't heard anything in months about the show, but obviously Avengers is a game-changer for Marvel. It's their property, and if I don't make it, at least I'll watch it."
That's the cool thing about del Toro, though: he's always fairly amicable, even in defeat. Despite saying that all of these titles he rattled off today are 100% dead (not "maybes" or "wish list" items, the director clarified) he's still chugging forward as a creator, and glad to enjoy the work of others who tackle pieces of pulp fiction he's passionate about. The dude's just a class act, and we always love that here at BMD.
So, which of these projects are you folks most sad about losing? It'll always be At the Mountains of Madness for me, but his potential Mark Frost collaboration also caught my eye and made my heart hurt a little. Sound off in the comments below with your own eulogy for a GDT movie that never will be.
