Guillermo del Toro on Frankenstein

After he completes his work on the two "Hobbit" films in 2012, the prodigiously optimistic del Toro has a whole slew of projects to keep him occupied until 2017, including a new version of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, his long-delayed Lovecraft adaptation At the Mountains of Madness, a just-announced trilogy of vampire novels (the first of which he claims is already written), and his own version of Frankenstein.

Del Toro is an acknowledged fan of "Frankenstein." He has busts of Boris Karloff as the monster in his house. One of his biggest filmic influences, the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, revolves around a showing of the classic Universal Frankenstein. He has raved about Bernie Wrightson's illustrated version and the original Frank Darabont script eventually filmed as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Kenneth Branagh in '94 and all-but-disowned by Darabont. Del Toro's version, however, sounds decidedly different…

"I'm not doing 'Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.' I'm doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it's not the central creation story, I'm not worried about that. The fact is I've been dreaming of doing a 'Frankenstein' movie since I was a child. The one thing I can promise is, compared to Kenneth Branagh, I will not appear shirtless in the movie!"

To read more about this and about Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit movie click here.

Del Toro to Write Vampire Trilogy

From AP: "Pan's Labyrinth" director Guillermo del Toro is collaborating with crime author Chuck Hogan on a trilogy of vampire novels, starting next summer with "The Strain."

"The idea is epic in scope," del Toro said in a statement issued Wednesday by publisher William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. "The trilogy advances in unexpected ways and each book contains unique and surprising revelations about the history, physiology and lore of the vampiric race, tracing its roots all the way back to its Old Testament origins."

The 43-year-old Del Toro, whose films include the "Hellboy" movies, "Mimic" and "The Devil's Backbone," is best known for "Pan's Labyrinth," a surreal take on the Spanish Civil War that came out in 2006 and won three Academy Awards, for makeup, art direction and cinematography.

Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein Miniseries

From MTV:

In Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” there are two monsters: the creature brought back to life, of course, and the mad scientist who does it, Dr. Frankenstein.

Actually, make that three monsters, the affable Guillermo Del Toro joked. “I will appear shirtless for most of the length of the film,” he teased of his upcoming reinterpretation of the classic story. “You will be amazed at my chocolate bar physique!”

Del Toro, who told MTV News that he’s “always been” interested in directing a version of “Frankenstein,” said he’s hard at work in pre-production, crafting drawings which he hopes to use as a basis for the world of the film. “I started doing some notes before the strike,” he revealed. “[During the strike] I can only draw now.”

“The only way to do the Shelley novel is to actually do a four-hour miniseries,” he said. “But I think there permutations in which you can tell the myth in a different way.”

- The Monster