The LA Times has published a story on Guillermo del Toro, mostly linked to the fact that he’s premiering the horror film he produced, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.

In the course of the story, the author drops this remark: “Creative differences with Tolkien guru Peter Jackson led to his departure from” The Hobbit. He doesn’t quote GdT or anyone else on this, so the author may simply be assuming it.

[Thanks to David Platt for this link!]

The Guardian has posted a long story on Guillermo del Toro’s current activities. It’s mainly about the horror film he has produced but not directed, Julia’s Eyes. It also mentions that his new directorial project, Pacific Rim, may start shooting in the fall. Here’s what GdT has to say in passing about The Hobbit:

A nine-month delay to the start of production on the two Hobbit pictures which del Toro had co-written forced him to vacate the director’s chair last year; Peter Jackson has now begun production. “I write back and forth with Peter, and I’m following eagerly the development of the movies,” del Toro says diplomatically. He received arguably an even greater knock-back two months ago, when Universal declined to finance his adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s monster extravaganza At The Mountains Of Madness. Even the presence of del Toro’s friend James Cameron as producer couldn’t assuage the studio’s fears about lavishing such a colossal budget on a disturbing, R-rated movie.

I would imagine Guillermo would keep up on the production, given that he’s co-writer on the scripts and would presumably be consulted about changes. (We know that Peter and his writing team make frequent revisions during filming.)

Deadline.com has posted a new interview with Guillermo del Toro. He talks about the reasons why the At the Mountains of Madness project at Universal fell apart and the possibility that it might come to fruition at some point after he finishes Pacific Rim.

Fans have started a petition addressed to Universal, urging its officials to change their minds and greenlight the At the Mountains of Madness project. To sign it, go here.

Those interested in the works of H. P. Lovecraft can get an ebook of his works here. (I personally think “At the Mountains of Madness” is about as unfilmable a piece a fiction as I have ever read, but I trust Guillermo to make it into a terrific film–if he ever gets the chance.

[Thanks to David Ivory for alerting me to the petition and the Lovecraft website!]

It’s ironic that Guillermo del Toro decided not to direct The Hobbit after two years of pre-production and delays in obtaining a greenlight from the producers. Now The Hobbit is about to start principal photography–and would already be filming if Peter Jackson had not been temporarily felled by an ulcer–and Guillermo still has no definite directing project. His last released film was Hellboy II: The Golden Army, in 2008.

For a while it looked like he would finally get to make At the Mountains of Madness, long a pet project of his, when James Cameron agreed to direct and Tom Cruise considered starring. But according to a new Variety article on Guillermo’s post-Hobbit career plans, Universal refused to commit a $150 million budget to what was sure to be an R-rated film. Once again that project is “dormant.” Now Guillermo is in the late stages of negotiations to direct a horror film called Pacific Rim.* Variety surveys his current plans:

Besides those previous commitments at U, del Toro has also made commitments to a film based on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney and a retelling of “Pinocchio” for Pathe and the Jim Henson Co.

Insiders close to del Toro tell Variety that each of these projects is still in development. Some have completed scripts, others have just begun storyboarding — but none has been shelved.

Even “At the Mountains of Madness” has a glimmer of hope — del Toro’s camp is still having discussions with Universal on how to move forward. While nothing has been axed on del Toro slate yet, it’s hard to give a timetable on when any of these projects might get made given that the helmer has always waited till late in the post-production process of his current film to choose his next.

“Pacific Rim” looks to be that film, but given the slow process of the development world, it shouldn’t be hard for him to stay hands-on with each project as it comes along.

(The other projects at Universal were Frankenstein and Drood, now both dropped.)

Let’s hope that Pacific Rim breaks the logjam and lets one of the most talented directors in North America to get back to work.

[Added the same day:]

Daniel Zalewski, who had written a long profile of GdT for the New Yorker, has posted a follow-up story. On Monday night he received a brief message from the director: “Madness has gone dark. The ‘R’ did us in.” He also quotes Adam Fogelson, the chairman of Universal, who in January was incredibly enthusiastic about Guillermo and James Cameron’s presentation of the project. Sounds like “At the Studios of Madness” would be a more apt title.

The Independent has a fairly long story on Guillermo del Toro, past, present, and future. Along with talking about his Mexican films and discussing his At the Mountains of Madness project, he describes the problems that drove him to quit The Hobbit and move his family back to North America:

While the film now has a tentative start date of next February (with British actor Martin Freeman due to play Bilbo Baggins), del Toro is the one who has seemingly suffered the most. After spending two years in pre-production, he had received no assurances that it was a go-project, due in part to financial problems at MGM, one of three studios behind it. “It was starting to weigh [on me] in a way that was not positive for me or the project,” he says. “People need to fathom this – yes, of course a director sticks with a project for ten years… I’ve done it myself. But to relocate your entire family life, home, for a period that long without any certainty that it will get made or when it will get made… it started to become very worrisome.”

He is married to his high-school sweetheart Lorenza, and del Toro had brought her and their two daughters, Mariana and Marisa, out to Wellington to live while he worked with Jackson on the project. “I really loved the country and could’ve lived there,” he says. Does he regret the time spent, now he has quit? “I tell you in my life, I try not to deal with regrets. I have a huge heartbreak. I have incredible sadness. I have disappointment. I have heartache. I have a piece of me that is dented forever. But no regrets. I don’t believe in regrets. It’s a huge part of me. And I believe it was the best for me and the project.”

(The story doesn’t mention the fact that Guillermo is one of the four scriptwriters and presumably will have a connection with the film, even though he is no longer directing it.

Not surprisingly, the resolution of the various problems besetting The Hobbit have saddened Guillermo del Toro, but he does not think he was wrong to give up the directorial job in May:

He tells Britain’s Film 2010, “It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever taken. I have incredible heartache. I feel terrible about it. It’s very hard. It’s getting a little easier to talk about it, but essentially it’s like you’ve been recently widowed and everybody (is) asking you how exactly your wife died. It’s pretty morbid.

“There was no other choice, I kept postponing, I kept fending off the problems, I kept compartmentalising, I kept with it, everything we could (do).”

The film is back on track and due to begin shooting in February (11) and Del Toro admits he’ll be first in line to see it.

He adds, “I’ll be able to watch it and (I will) probably enjoy it. But you know, with The Hobbit, I feel like the guy (survival mountain climber Aron Ralston) in the real-life experience that Danny Boyle just did his movie (127 Hours about). I was hanging by a thread on my arm for so long that at the end of the day you have to cut it off. Do I like having one arm less? No. But did I have to? Yes.”

(From Contactmusic.com)

I doubt that Guillermo will really have to stand in line to see the film! He’s still co-screenwriter, of course, and involved in the film. He’s had a big impact on the pre-production, too, and maybe will be called back for consultations during the shooting and pre-production. I hope he will feel a part of the film’s making.

[Thanks to Paulo Pereira for the link!]

Anne Thompson has posted an interview with Guillermo del Toro where he talks about, among many other things, leaving The Hobbit and what may be his next directorial effort. The video is in three parts, and the Hobbit section comes after the 3 1/2 minute point in the first:

GdT: It was tough, the transition from The Hobbit to whatever was next, because contrary of what anyone could believe, I left that ship without having any port. I didn’t leave to go to a greener pasture.

AT: You left in order to be let out of the box. Is that right?

GdT: I said, it’s time. I’m going to go out and control my life and say, this is what I’m doing. I’m failing or succeeding at it. I went with no safety net. There was an impasse there that was really difficult. The heartbreak was big, and I was very careful not to go into a rebound movie. I didn’t want to grab the first big ship, and I did my exercise in chastity and waited for Mountains of Madness to happen, which hadn’t happened in thirteen years. There was no reason to think it would, but it looks like it may.

At the Mountains of Madness is Guillermo’s project to make a film adapting H. P. Lovecraft’s 1936 novella.

The Los Angeles Times’ “24 Frames” blog has posted a story based on an interview with Guillermo del Toro. In discussing his decision not to direct The Hobbit, he had this to say:

The genre auteur says he has no regrets about departing the New Zealand production, but says that anyone who think that MGM’s financial mess was the main culprit for his departure is oversimplifying the issue.

“People kept misconstruing that it was MGM. It came from many factors,” Del Toro told 24 Frames in an interview at Comic-Con. “It wasn’t just MGM. These are very complicated movies, economically and politically. You have to get the blessing from three studios.”

Instead, he said, it was the cumulative effect of all of these problems that began to wear him down. “It was really the fact that every six months we thought we were beginning, and every six months we got pushed [back]. And before you could blink, it was a year, and then it was two years.”

So was there was a last straw in this bundle of woes? Some insiders have said that Del Toro and Jackson clashed over creative-control issues. The director said that in all their time working on the movie, he and the “Lord of the Rings” filmmaker were nothing but copacetic, though Del Toro didn’t entirely rule out that it one day could have become fraught. “We were at the stage where the collaboration was good. If there were going to be any issues, we never got to that stage [in development],” he said.

As far as I can tell, the main named person who said that MGM was holding up the greenlight on The Hobbit was Guillermo himself, who made a statement that seemed to imply such a thing on TheOneRing.net. That followed shortly upon an unnamed “absolutely reliable source” who told TORN that MGM was indeed the main factor behind the delay.

Well, not to say “I told you so,” but although I’ve been covering the MGM developments, I’ve also been opining that I didn’t think the studio’s financial mess could be the main factor in the delay. Warner Bros. would not walk into a deal with a studio known to be tottering on the brink of bankruptcy without multiple contingency plans. Still, it sounds like there is some sort of tangle among New Line, Warner, and MGM, “economically and politically.” I hope someday we find out what the real cause was.

Yesterday TheOneRing.net scotched rumors that The Hobbit has been greenlit and is planned to be 3D. Guillermo del Toro had given an conference-call interview about Splice, a horror film he co-executive-produced. Today the full text of the interview went up on “Shock Till You Drop” with additional quotations from GdT:

Question: Do you know when production is going to begin on The Hobbit and when you’re actually going to get onset?

Del Toro: There can’t be any start date, really, until the MGM situation gets resolved because they do hold a considerable portion of the rights and it’s impossible to make a unilateral decision by New Line or Warner. We really believe that dates will be known after the fact of MGM’s fate. Whether they stay and get supported or they get bought or they transfer some of the rights, nobody knows. We’ve been caught in a very tangled negotiation. Now I’ve been on the project for nearly two years. We have designed all the creatures. We have designed the sets, the wardrobe. We have done animatics and planned very lengthy action sequences. We have scary sequences and funny sequences and we are very, very prepared for when it’s finally triggered, but we don’t know anything until MGM is solved.

Question: Just to absolutely clear, the story that was reported earlier that The Hobbit has been greenlit for 3-D, that is false?

Del Toro: In both counts, there is absolutely no final answers. It’s not greenlit. That’s categorical. It’s not greenlit. 3-D has been discussed literally once in the room. The budget and the schedule and everything we’re handling – the cost of the film and the number of days it would take to shoot – is being handled right now without looking towards 3-D. Is there a chance it would become 3-D in the future? Maybe. But right now it’s not being planned as such.

This confirms that a lot of progress has been made on the preparations for the filming. I’m not keen to see The Hobbit made in 3-D, since the idea is to make it blend smoothly in as a lead-in to the LOTR trilogy, so I was happy to hear that 3-D seems unlikely to be used.

The MGM financial crisis seems to be more involved in the delay in the greenlighting of the film than I would have expected. I’ve been assuming that the contract between Warner Bros./New Line and MGM would have been full of contingency measures to be taken in such a situation–especially given that the latter studio’s debt problems were well known. At this point, we can but wait. At least it’s good to hear from Guillermo after a long silence on the part of the filmmakers, who obviously are forbidden by their contracts to talk freely about the situation.

Yesterday blogger Anne Thompson posted an interview concerning The Lovely Bones on Indiewire. Two interviews, really, since she talked by phone with Fran Walsh and by flip cam with Peter Jackson. (His is posted as three clips adding up to around 15 minutes.)

There are many, many interviews that these two and their colleagues have done during the publicity tour leading up to the release of their new film. I link this one because Anne Thompson asks more sophisticated questions than most interviewers, and the discussion gets into some interesting topics, including the two level of narration by the heroine, Susie Salmon, and the way Peter and Fran approached the filming of the murder scene. As usual when asked to go beyond the standard Frequently Asked Questions, Peter has some cogent things to say the choices made in the adaptation process.

I also have an excuse to link the piece because Fran also refers briefly to The Hobbit:

All along, Walsh and Jackson were also juggling other projects, such as District 9, which they produced. Jackson also collaborated with Steven Spielberg on Tin Tin and with Guillermo del Toro on The Hobbit.

In that case Del Toro joined the usual troica of writers in a room and slugged it out on two scripts. “He brings a tremendous earthy sense of humor,” says Walsh. “The biggest issue is always length.” She was surprised at how joyful she was to return to Middle Earth after being relieved to leave it at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Casting began on The Hobbit in Wellywood this week.

Anne’s piece also suggests that the next writing project for the pair is the second Tin Tin film, confirming what PJ said in an earlier interview.