The Horror Geek - News, Rants and Reviews From The Horror Geek!

A few days back, I posted a story about the upcoming second collaboration between Guillermo Del Toro and Juan Antonio Bayona (the first being the very disturbing and surreal film The Orphanage). The film is called Hater and it’s an adaptation of a David Moody novel.

The guys over at Twitch got a chance to sit down with Bayona recently, and the filmmaker had some interesting things to say about his upcoming project. Here are some highlights.

When asked to describe the story of Hater, Bayona summed it up as follows:

“Hater is about a sudden epidemic of hate that comes from nowhere and happens to everybody. It doesn’t care about race, sex or heritage. The media tells the story in a way that one has to wonder if everything is really happening, or maybe if it’s all result of collective hysteria.  The uncertainty is frightening: nobody knows who will survive at the end of the day or who will die. What I really liked about the story was that it deals with the real world we are living. It asks if we want to live in a world where we are controlled from above, through fear. Hater is an answer to that fear: it shows what can happen when people react to it with uncontrollable fury. That’s an excellent start for a movie.”

He also offered up this thoughtful answer when asked to describe how Hater would compare to his previous film, The Orphanage:

“When a director gives himself to the story, he ends up soaking the movie with his own style. Hater is a horror tale, but it’s also a very emotional story. It will be much more violent than The Orphanage, because it deals with hate as the main emotion. But it also talks about forgiveness, sacrifice and even love.“

Point your browser in the direction of Twitch to read more about how the relationship between Bayona and Del Toro works.

I have to say that this film is rapidly moving up my list of most anticipated titles-which is pretty impressive since they haven’t started shooting, the book isn’t out yet, and we haven’t even seen a piece of production art. The collaboration between Del Toro and Bayona, coupled with their previous work, and the stuff that’s being said about this film in the early stages, is enough to have piqued my interest. And hey, at least it’s not a remake, right?

A few days back, I posted a piece talking about just how insanely busy Guillermo Del Toro is (check it out here. The director’s slate is so full of projects he could be literally locked up til 2017. Apparently, though, Del Toro found some wiggle room (maybe he cut out a few scheduled bathroom breaks or something) because Variety is reporting that he’s utilized the power of his first-look deal at Universal to nab the rights to David Moody’s novel Hater.

Guillermo’s far too busy to direct the adaptation, so he’s passed on that privilege to Antonio Bayona, who directed the 2007 film The Orphanage (which Del Toro also produced). This good news for people who love artsy horror films filled with weird, surreal images and disturbing violence.

The novel, which is being adapted by screenwriter Glen Mazzara, is slated for hardcover release in February of 2009. The plot focuses on one man’s quest to find his place in a world gone mad-a world where something has caused people to become remorseless killers who will attack and everyone around them with lethal force. This marks a new direction for the author (who’d previously written the Autumn series of living dead novels) and that Del Toro is already interested bodes well for the quality of the book.

Hater will be Bayona’s first English language film.

Filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro is a busy dude. Not only is he slated to direct the two part adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but his upcoming schedule also includes a new version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a long delayed cinematic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, a vampire novel trilogy, and a re-interpretation of Frankenstein. Apparently Guillermo wants to become the Spanish incarnation of Takashi Miike or something…

Del Toro spent Saturday night at the Director’s Guild of America as part of The New Yorker Festival’s series of talks and Comingsoon.net was there capture all the juicy details. The director spent a great deal of time speaking about The Hobbit, but had this to say about his version of Frankenstein.

Del Toro is an acknowledged fan of “Frankenstein.” He has busts of Boris Karloff as the monster in his house. One of his biggest filmic influences, the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, revolves around a showing of the classic Universal Frankenstein. He has raved about Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated version and the original Frank Darabont script eventually filmed as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Kenneth Branagh in ‘94 and all-but-disowned by Darabont. Del Toro’s version, however, sounds decidedly different…

“I’m not doing ‘Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.’ I’m doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it’s not the central creation story, I’m not worried about that. The fact is I’ve been dreaming of doing a ‘Frankenstein’ movie since I was a child. The one thing I can promise is, compared to Kenneth Branagh, I will not appear shirtless in the movie!”

The idea of doing an adventure story that involves the Monster sounds intriguing. I’d just settle for a faithful re-creation of the novel at this point (because it’s never been done), but Del Toro is one of the few filmmakers I could see taking the characters of Shelley’s novel and doing something new with them-and not having it suck in the process. I’m still trying to get the bitter taste left behind after viewing Branagh’s version out of my mouth (which found me saying that there should be a permanent moratorium on anyone attempting to make another adaptation of Frankenstein because they invariably fuck it up in the process), and this may be the version to do it.

All that being said, I’m still more excited about Del Toro tackling At the Mountains of Madness than anything else on his list of projects-yes, even The Hobbit. Del Toro adapting Lovecraft’s story could very well lead to a film that’s as classic as Carpenter’s version of The Thing.