Guillermo del Toro to Tackle Vampires (Again) in New Van Helsing Movie?
Posted 06.11.10 by BrentJS
Now that director Guillermo del Toro has dropped out of the time-consuming development of The Hobbit, he will have much more time to devote to various other projects, new and ongoing, that he has been linked to. And, according to Pajiba, one of those new projects could see del Toro once again taking a "stab" at the vampire genre in a new Van Helsing movie for Universal Pictures.
While LOTR fans were devastated by del Toro's decision to leave The Hobbit, it was actually considered to be good news to many other movie fans who feared that del Toro's other projects would fall by the wayside. If he had stayed on The Hobbit, del Toro would have been forced to relocate to New Zealand for six years (he has already spent two years there co-writing the script and developing creatures with WETA) which would pretty much preclude him from working on other projects during that time. Del Toro is currently producing an English-language remake of his Spanish horror movie The Orphanage; has talked about producing a live-action adaptation of the obscure DC Comics hero Deadman; has supposedly been working on a sequel to Hellboy II: The Golden Army; and has repeatedly expressed interest in the Marvel Comics character Dr. Strange.
Citing the anonymous source, "The Hollywood Cog," Pajiba claims that del Toro's first project post-Hobbit has him writing and producing a completely new movie — not a remake of Stephen Sommers' atrocious 2004 movie starring Hugh Jackman — based on the famous vampire-hunting character Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Del Toro is apparently working on an "action horror story" treatment that will be turned over to another writer to craft into script form. Del Toro's previous experience with the blood-sucking undead was as the director of Blade II, which was not very well-received by critics, but was a success at the box office, tripling its production budget.