Guillermo del Toro, for how successful he is as both a screenwriter and director, hasn't always had the best luck with getting all of his projects green-lit. Video game fans will already know this, with three of del Toro's gaming projects, Sundown, Insane, and Silent Hills all getting canceled long before they had a chance to be officially shown to the public. Turns out, he's had just as much trouble with a number of screenplays he's authored, too.
The Shape of Water director is known to get candid on social media, and Monday he revealed a list of scripts he wrote that never made it to the production stage, counting it as "more than a decade of work lost," and years more for a film that got into preproduction.
Among the screenplays del Toro wrote that never got made are his versions of Pacific Rim 2 ("very different," he says), Justice League Dark, Beauty and the Beast, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Wind in the Willows ("which I love"). Also on the list: The Witches, At the Mountains of Madness, Fantastic Voyage, Mephisto's Bridge, Superstitions, Nightmare Alley, Haunted Mansion, The Buried Giant, The Coffin, Drood, an untitled secret film, and List of 7, which he co-wrote with Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost. Plus a Hulk pilot.
"Each of them took months or years of my life," GDT said. "Meetings, synopsis, beat sheets and were all written, features- 90-130 pages each."
Counting his tweet adding Wind in the Willows to the bunch, it's a whopping 17 movies and one TV pilot, all of which had completed screenplays. He clarifies this by confirming that these aren't projects he wish he got the chance to work on or didn't get finished, and they they are, in fact, done.
Hopefully someone—maybe even Netflix, where GDT is busy working on his take on Pinnochio—will hit him up about getting at least one of these projects made.
