Guillermo Del Toro Says 'Hobbit' "Cannot Serve a Peter Jackson Film"

A show of hands here: Who thought Hellboy II not only deserved to make more money but would make more money? With Guillermo Del Toro's blossoming reputation, his selection as the director of The Hobbit, and the groundswell of support for the original Hellboy in the years after its release, the fact that it has, through this weekend, only put about about $75 million is a bit of a surprise. Of course, it did have The Dark Knight to contend with, but the sequel has been surpassed by Journey to the Center of the Earth and Step Brothers at the U.S. box office, which I certainly didn't see coming. But Del Toro is ready to move on - sort of - according to a new interview with The Sunday Times. He'll spend much of the next half-decade in New Zealand, working on the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy with producer Peter Jackson, which almost certainly won't have to explain its box office performance to anyone. But the inventive filmmaker admits that, because he covers a lot of the same territory in most of his films, so while he may be working from someone else's material, The Hobbit still attracts him on the same level. The Times says, "All his characters inhabit a universe that is structured but uncaring." “That’s what I love about fairytales; they tell the truth, not organised politics, religion or economics. Those things destroy the soul," claims Del Toro. "That is the idea from Pan’s Labyrinth and it surfaces in Hellboy and, to some degree, in all my films.” "I don’t think it’s a conscious decision," the director reasons of his recurring themes, adding, "it’s a proclivity, a compulsion.” As for The Hobbit, Del Toro says that he can't concern himself with making a carbon copy of the massively popular film series his now-producer Jackson directed:

“I’m trying to be faithful to what I read when I was young. That’s The Hobbit I’m serving. I cannot serve a Peter Jackson film. We also hope to bridge the trilogy. We will create an expansion of what lies in the four books and in a number of appendices. I’m not going to New Zealand for two years to do one movie. I’m going there for four years.”

When asked whether he will find room for the kind of evocative symbolism he's known for in The Hobbit, he replies, “Of course I will...It’s a proclivity, a compulsion.”

The first Hobbit film is currently scheduled for a December 2011 release, with the follow-up arriving a year later.

Comments

[Arman]

i wish from the bottom of my heart and i think i say this on behalf of all Tolkien worshipers that Del Toro should at least consider making the Silmarillion...the greates tale of them all. Who wouldn't want to see Morgoth, the Valar,Feanor,the shapping of Arda and all the wonders that is the world an imagination of Tolkien

[james]

fag

[Simon]

I completely agree Arman, i think the Silmarillion is my favorite book, and with children of Hurin out now there is even more material.

p.s. go fuck yourself james.

[Asana]

I'd be more surprised at Hellboy 2's box office numbers if it hadn't fallen in the line of sight of that freight train known as The Dark Knight. Add to that a marketing scheme which just never seemed to take much flight and it's easy to see where the film might falter in ticket sales.

Outside of getting the perfect release date timing down, marketing (or the lack thereof) can truly make or break a film. The marketing for Hellboy 2 seemed terribly short-sighted and undercooked in comparison to that for Dark Knight. I'd barely seen any buzz beyond the trailer for the film and even that didn't show up as often as it probably should have. Next NBC with its small array of Hellboy side gag ads really did nothing (short of annoy viewers) to get people charged up for seeing the film.

There's perhaps two significant hurdles that Hellboy 2 missed transcending. One was the clear and burgeoning groundswell of interest surrounding The Dark Knight. This sophomore outing should have outperformed Journey To The Center of The Earth and Step Brothers and were it not for that giant looming bat it probably would have easily. The other hurdle is more difficult to pin down accurately but I really believe people are filled to the brim on superhero themed flicks. Cramming Hancock/Hellboy 2/Dark Knight in such close quarters was bound to see some fall out. Iron Man wisely avoided the hot zone by releasing in May. Hellboy 2 might've been better off as a late August release or even October where it would be well away from the Batman.

[Ron Perlman]

Truth is, I'm only famous in France.

[Get The Big Picture]

Asana -

Clearly, The Dark Knight capsized Hellboy, although nobody in their right mind expected the Batman movie to become the second biggest movie of all time. So, it's easy in hindsight to say they didn't do enough marketing, but the truth is, between Hancock and TDK, it was going to get squeezed anyway. They were better off doing something unusual, something the other movies weren't doing, to try to raise awareness that way. That's why I liked their marketing. They didn't waste money in May and early June; they pinpointed a two-week window and attacked that on all of NBC/Universal's networks with advertising that stood out. You hated it, and probably a lot of other people did, too, but I think that's why they did it the way they did.

Yes, picking the right week is important, and I think if they had to do it all over again, they would've come out this past week or something, when summer's more or less running on fumes.

This wasn't Universal's big movie of the summer, so they weren't going to throw ungodly amounts of money at it. However, if The Dark Knight hadn't been a $300 million juggernaut in eight days, I think Hellboy would have inched closer to $100 million.

Then again, there's always the possibility that Del Toro's not a big director to summer moviegoers. Certainly, he doesn't have the clout with that crowd the way Spielberg or even Michael Bay does.

[Michael]

Well, let's see if that fan base doesn't get any bigger once Sons of Anarchy comes out.

[Becky]

What you say about marketing through the NBC is fine if films are just shown in America. But if you are planning to market a film on a world wide scale, you can't just focus your efforts on one part of the world and expect that word of mouth will get you through it. Truely, I think that Hellboy II will go the same way as the original and make more money through DVD sales rather than box office sales.
Plus, all the general populace really know about Hellboy is that the first movie did badly at the box office. So without decent publicity, and in conjunction with poor release timing, I'm absolutely not suprised at its intake at the box office, even in comparison to JTTCOTE (which, if I remember correctly, did have the added quirk of being in 3D, did it not?).