Guillermo del Toro

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Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro, 2006
Born	Guillermo del Toro Gómez October 9, 1964 (1964-10-09) (age 43) Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Occupation	Film director, producer, screenwriter and special makeup effects designer

Guillermo del Toro Gómez (born October 9, 1964) is an Academy Award-nominated Mexican filmmaker.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Professional career 1.3 Future Projects 2 Director filmography 3 Possible future projects 4 Producer filmography 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He studied in the Instituto de Ciencias, and was raised by his Catholic grandmother. Del Toro first got involved with filmmaking when he was about eight years old. He executive produced his first feature in 1986, at the age of 21. Before that he spent nearly 10 years as a make-up designer, and formed his own company, Necropia, in the early 80s. He also co-founded the Guadalajara-based Mexican Film Festival. Later on in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang.

In 1998 his father was kidnapped in Mexico, which prompted del Toro to move abroad to live as an expatriate. He currently lives in Westlake Village in Los Angeles, California.

[edit] Professional career

Guillermo del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from comic book adaptations (Hellboy and Blade II) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco. These two films, El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) and El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), are among his most critically acclaimed works. They share similar settings, protagonists (young children), and themes (including the relationship between fantasy/horror and the struggle to live under authoritarian or dictatorial rule) with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s.

Del Toro, as interviewed on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show, lists several fascinations that have become regular features in his films: "I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things." Del Toro's work notably frequently includes monsters. In recent interviews, he has stated that he has always been "in love with monsters. My fascination with them is almost anthropological... I study them, I dissect them in many of my movies: I want to know how they work, what the inside of them looks like, [and] what their sociology is." He also mentions as influences Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jorge Luis Borges.

He is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The three often influence each other's directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose. Cuarón was one of the producers of Pan's Labyrinth. All three received Oscar nominations when the 2006 Academy Award nominations were unveiled in January 2007 - del Toro for his original screenplay for Pan's Labyrinth (the film itself received 6 nominations, including Best Foreign Language Film), Cuarón for editing and co-writing Children of Men and Iñárritu for producing and directing Babel. Del Toro also received a Nebula Award for Best Script for his Pan's Labyrinth script.^[1] He turned down a chance to direct I Am Legend, One Missed Call (2008) and Halo to work on Hellboy II: The Golden Army.^[2]

[edit] Future Projects

Guillermo has said that one of his future projects will be directing on The Coffin based on the critically praised graphic novel written by Phil Hester, and drawn by Mike Huddleston. He'll be directing Deadman, The Witches, a story adaption by Roald Dahl, The Champions which the film is based on a British television series and At the Mountains of Madness, based upon the the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name.^{[citation needed]}

Del Toro has expressed interest in adapting Frankenstein as a faithful "Miltonian tragedy". He has read a draft by Frank Darabont which he considered near perfect.^[3] Del Toro said of his vision, "What I’m trying to do is take the myth and do something with it, but combining elements of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein without making it just a classical myth of the monster. The best moments in my mind of Frankenstein, of the novel, are yet to be filmed [...] The only guy that has ever nailed for me the emptiness, not the tragic, not the Miltonian dimension of the monster, but the emptiness is Christopher Lee in the Hammer films, where he really looks like something obscenely alive. Boris Karloff has the tragedy element nailed down but there are so many versions, including that great screenplay by Frank Darabont that was ultimately not really filmed."^[4]

In April of 2008 Del Toro was officially announced as director of "The Hobbit" in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series alongside executive producer Peter Jackson.^[5] Del Toro stated that "Contributing to the 'Lord of the Rings' legacy is an absolute dream come true." For the next four years, he and his wife and two daughters^[6] will be moving to New Zealand^[7].

[edit] Director filmography

• Doña Lupe (1985)
• Geometria (1987)
• Cronos (1993)
• Mimic (1997)
• El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) (2001)
• Blade II (2002)
• Hellboy (2004)
• El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (2006)
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
• The Hobbit (2011)
• Untitled The Lord of the Rings prequel (2012)

[edit] Possible future projects

• 3993 (2009) (announced)
• At the Mountains of Madness (2010) (announced)
• Doctor Strange (TBD) (attached)^[8]
• Saturn and the End of Days ^[9]

[edit] Producer filmography

• El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)
• While She Was Out (2008) (post-production)
• Caleuche: El llamado del mar (2008)
• Death and Me (in development)
• Hater (in development)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Guillermo del Toro at the Internet Movie Database
• Del Toro Films Fansite
• Premiere Magazine: Inside Del Toro's Sketchbook
• Angels and Insects: The Cinematic Spawn of Guillermo Del Toro
• GreenCine Daily interview
• Audio Interviews

v • d • e   The films of Guillermo del Toro Cronos • Mimic • The Devil's Backbone • Blade II • Hellboy • Pan's Labyrinth • Hellboy II: The Golden Army • The Hobbit film duology