In a featurette from the new MIMIC BluRay, GDT talks about why we revisit movies, and the “ever-flowing” river of narrative.

Lots of news coming our way in the world of GDT – check out the full report below:

• MIMIC is finally getting a Blu-Ray release on September 27th of this year! This HD release promises new bonus materials, including an audio commentary and introduction from GDT, plus two featurettes. The featurettes will be a “behind-the-scenes” retrospective and a special look at the insect creatures.  Also included will be deleted/alternate scenes, outtakes and storyboard animatics.  Will this also be the long-awaited “director’s cut”? No mention of a new cut in the press release, so it would be surprising if it is the anticipated director’s cut of the film.
• GDT will be at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con to promote PACIFIC RIM.  Here is when you can catch him if you are attending

Thursday, July 21, 6:00 – The Visionaries: A Discussion with Jon Favreau and Guillermo Del Toro on the Future of Pop Culture.  This will be the one you won’t want to miss, folks!!  Get in line now.

Friday, July 22nd, 12:45 – Legendary Pictures Preproduction.  GDT will be joined by the unofficial cast of PACIFIC RIM, Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Charlie Day and Rinko Kikuchi

Note: Although it doesn’t say GDT will attend this panel, you might also want to check out the 2:00pm Film District panel on Thursday, since they will be celebrating the release of DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. 

• Guillermo Del Toro has confirmed that Guillermo Navarro, his long time Director of Photography, will be the DT for PACIFIC RIM.  The official start date for shooting RIM is October 31st in Toronto at Pinewood Studios.  It is slated for  July 21, 2011 release.
• Here are some nice GDT related stories you should check out:

GDT Interview Audio: “Fantasy is Rebellion…Always” (Hollywood Outbreak)

Alchemist Guillermo Del Toro Turns Creepy, Bizarre Material into Movie Gold (Vanity Fair)

Guillermo Del Toro’s Imagination is Working Overtime (L.A. Times)

• DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK will kick off London’s Film4 FrightFest Film Festival on August 25th

JoBlo.com got a (very) rough cut of the MIMIC original ending.  Apparently, the original ending did not score well with test audiences and MIRAMAX and the Weinsteins insisted that Guillermo change it. 

We know that Guillermo has been working on the MIMIC Director’s Cut DVD for some time, and to my knowledge, the cut is complete.  A key obstacle in its release was the sale of MIRAMAX to Filmyard Holdings, which concluded around July 2010.

Will the MIMIC Director’s Cut DVD ever see the light of day? Not sure, but for now, we have this leaked alternate ending. Perhaps we will someday get to see GDT’s original vision in its entirety.

Click this link to watch the video, and be sure to make your comments below!  What do think of it?

If you were paying attention to our Twitter account, @deltorofilms, we informed you that Digital Spy was going to do a Twitter Q&A with GDT. Lucky for us, they filmed the whole thing!

Topics of note:

Next year, Palace Press will be releasing a “big coffee table book” containing all his diary contents.  GDT said it will be a “big, expensive, heavy book” that will show pages from his famous journal with explanations on the side. He also said there will be a limited edition facsimile of the diaries available.

GDT says the MIMIC director’s cut DVD is still in limbo, and will be until Miramax is purchased.  He says he is “super happy” with the director’s cut. “It is a better movie, I think it is more understandable, a bit more cohesive. I love the movie. I hope it gets released because then I can say I like all my movies!”

Enjoy:

Guillermo stopped by the message board to update us on the CRONOS Criterion DVD and the MIMIC Director’s cut DVD. Here’s what he had to say:

CRONOS is evolving nicely. We are including a NEVER-SEEN-BEFORE version of GEOMETRIA (1987) the short that I made for 1 thousand bucks and that I was never able to finish the way I wanted it. NOW I re-finsihed it for this disc (dont worry, no CGI or fancy stuff) and I like it- I never did before- but now I do.

CRONOS has never looked so beautiful and we found dozens of photographs of the making of the device, etc

MIMIC is looking fabulous. Some of the negative had been lost but we found alternatives and are finishing the Director’s Cut. VERY HAPPY!!

Guillermo mentioned in an interview posted by SciFi.com that his Director’s cut DVD of MIMIC is still in the works:

I’m working on it. I’m doing it. It’s going to be as close to a director’s cut as we can. We actually had a great experience the other day. We watched my original cuts, and we were like, “Oh my God, this is such a f–king different movie.” … We rescued it because I kept a copy at the right moment. I said, “In case it never happens, I’m going to distribute it at conventions.”

  

A plague is killing millions of people. A genetically engineered insect is built to eradicate the plague and save lives. Fortunately, the insect is engineered to die off after one generation….or is it?

Sounds like the plot summary of MIMIC, doesn’t it? Well this time, I’m talking about a British biotech company that says they can genetically engineer mosquitos to control the spread of dengue fever, which, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, kills 5 million people a year.

The company, Oxitec, is using a variation of a proven process that helped eliminate the screwworm (heh heh) and the Mediterranean fruit fly in North America. However, instead of using the common “sterile insect technique” (remember Jurassic Park? Same principle), they are engineering the insects to be dependant on tetracycline.

Didn’t these people listen to Jeff Goldblum??? NATURE FINDS A WAY!!!

I’m kidding. Really, this could turn out to be an amazing new technology. I’m willing to be open-minded about genetically engineered organisms if millions of lives could be saved. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted web personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

But really, chemically dependent steril mosquitos aren’t half as cool as insect cyborgs. Check out this article about researchers at Cornell that developed remote control moths. My only hope that this technology will be used only for good – like putting frickin’ cameras on their heads and piloting them towards the girl’s locker room.

Our sources at DTF suggest there may be a Mimic Special Edition DVD in the works. The release date is unknown, and we don’t have official confirmation yet, but things are looking up for GDT’s first studio effort. As we know, GDT liked some things about the end product, but was largely unhappy with the end result due to studio interference. Let’s hope this special edition will be a “director’s cut” – a version that is more true to the film GDT INTENDED to make.

There have been many misconceptions about how Guillermo feels about Mimic and his experience working on the film. In a post that he made on our Message Board, he set the record straight: