Happy 2011, everyone! 

Die-hard Del Toro fans may be wondering what they can expect from the New Year.  I can guarantee this:  it will NOT be like 2009 and 2010 – which was chock full of a whole lot of nothin’.

Sure, we got some HOBBIT preproduction,  THE STRAIN trilogy, SPLICE, and some other nice things.   Actually, THE STRAIN was more than just ”nice”, it was pretty darn cool, but let’s get down to brass tacks:

WHEN ARE YOU DIRECTING A MOVIE, GUILLERMO???

Come on, that’s what all of you are thinking, right?  Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room, give him a paper cut and pour lemon juice all over it.

But here is the thing:  the question above is not a desperate plea.  It is not a call to action to a man who is presumably sitting on the couch, watching Maury Povich and eating stale pork rinds. 

No, sir.  Guillermo KNOWS what he’s doing next. 

He just ain’t sayin’.

So, here is my fabulous New Year’s prediction:  GDT will be sitting in the director’s chair sometime this year, and I’ll bet we will see a new GDT feature in 2012. Bet on it.

GDT Challenges Developers

Kotaku is reporting that Guillermo is challenging the developers of inSANE, his new game with THQ.

Danny Bilson, one of the higher-ups from the game’s publisher at THQ recalled this ultimatum while talking to Kotaku today: “He said, ‘At the next meeting I want all of you to come to the meeting with one dream feature, one thing you’ve always wanted in a game … or don’t come to the meeting.’

And Danny already has his idea in mind, and it sounds great:

Mine’s Autotuning. To have a great fiction game, everyone has to finish the game. To have a trilogy you have to get to the end and care about the story. You can’t care about the story if you choke off halfway through or you get sick of it or fatigued or whatever. So the game will have the coolest [artificial intelligence]-based auto-tuning where it’s challenging for everybody.

Sounds great, Danny.  Sounds like storytelling is a premium for this project, and Guillermo is pushing the envelope. Hope they can pull it off.

More Tom Cruise rumors

Rumors again are circulating the internet that Tom Cruise has signed on for AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, this time from a casual aside in an article at Deadline.

So here is the unbiased, fact-based report on Tom Cruise starring in ATMOM.  Here is what we know:

1. The Deadline report cites no sources in its assertion that Tom Cruise is attached, that said….

2. GDT is a Tom Cruise fan

3. And in a YouTube video posted by cronoticias.com, James Cameron says this about ATMOM at about the 6:29 mark:

I really don’t know what is officially announced yet…Tom’s very excited about doing the movie. I’ve known him for years. I would love it if he did it, but no deals have been made.

So there you go – it sounds like “Tom”, if that is indeed “Tom Cruise” that Cameron is referring to, is the first choice for ATMOM, but no official announcement has been made.

What do you think about Tom Cruise starring in ATMOM?

It may finally happen.

Guillermo’s dream project, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, according to an exclusive report from Deadline.com, may finally come to the big screen.

If reports are true, all it took was the influence of Guillermo’s close friend James Cameron to make it happen.

Deadline reports that AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS will be shot as a 3D film for Universal Pictures.

The background on the project is that it was originally set up at Dreamworks in 2004. (I do recall Guillermo saying that Steven Spielberg asked to see pictures from his famous notebook around that time…that could be what he sent.) When GDT made the mult-picture deal with Universal in 2007, ATMOM was included. Now, with GDT leaving THE HOBBIT project, his deal with Universal seems to be back on track.

No official announcement has been made by Universal or Guillermo.

  

AICN has posted an interview with director (and GDT pal) James Cameron, who talked a little about The Coffin.

Despite restructuring his company, Cameron says he and GDT still want do get the film made:

What I’ve said is there are only a couple of projects that I will continue to be involved with that we did develop and COFFIN is one of them. The reason for that is because Guillermo del Toro is one of my best friends and we’ve never really worked together. I mean, we always feel like we’re working together because he gets all involved in my stuff, I get all involved with his stuff, but not in an official capacity.

So, COFFIN is definitely not dead and Guillermo says he still wants to make it.

Guillermo says that he wants to make The Coffin in 3D, and with Cameron’s experience in this area, the partnership makes sense.