Movies
Confirmed: Guillermo del Toro Directing ‘Beauty and the Beast’
Another odd project I don’t know if we should be reporting on is the super vague adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, which Variety reports will now be directed by Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro has yet to venture out of the “dark side” (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade 2, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone), which makes me believe this will also be a chilling take on the classic story.
Warner Bros. has tapped Bridget Jones’s Diary scribe Andrew Davies to write Beauty and the Beast, which also has Harry Potter star Emma Watson in final negotiations to topline the period pic. I can only assume she’ll be playing the beast?
It should also be noted that Del Toro is working on Pacific Rim, and attached his name to more than a handful of projects. Don’t be surprised if this curse is never lifted. Del Toro will write a treatment that Davies will then work off of. 
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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