According to Variety, Guillermo Del Toro is currently collaborating with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens on the script for The Hobbit, partly via video conferencing and partly by traveling to New Zealand every three weeks. While GDT may have committed the next five years of his life to directing The Hobbit and its sequel, he’s also thinking way ahead. He has made a long-term plan with Universal, with which he’s got a three-year first-look signed in June of 2007. GDT is announced to direct four films for Universal: remakes of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Slaughterhouse-Five, and Drood, an adaptation of a forthcoming Dan Simmons novel.

The studio is also still interested in GDT’s project to adapt H. P. Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness, for which he had already written a script. Ultimately he’d also like to direct a third Hellboy film: “We laid the groundwork to have a magnificent third act. I’d like to return to an action franchise with 60-year-old actor Ron Perlman, because he’ll be scratching at that age when I get to it.”

The Hellboy project depends on how well Hellboy II: The Golden Army does internationally. After a big opening weekend it didn’t do well in the U.S., but it has been more successful overseas.

The Variety story also suggests that the sudden intrusion of the Hobbit project caused some tensions between GDT and Universal. The studio’s president of production, Donna Langley, said, “We came out the other side of some tough conversations with a stronger bond and sense of long-term commitment.” For a director who specializes in horror and fantasy, the relationship makes sense. Universal’s great strength in the golden age of Hollywood was its series of monster movies: Frankenstein and its sequels, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, and others. Frankenstein is one of GDT’s favorite films, and he says, “With that one, they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands to prevent me from directing it.”