This makes me feel excited and kind of disappointed all at the same time. Recently, Luke and I debated the merits behind remaking classic horror movies since Peter Jackson recently announced he was going to do King Kong. Since I was pro-remake, Luke asked me what “I would remake” and my answer was The Creature From The Black Lagoon.
A few days later, I read this on AICN:
“I want to set the story in Victorian times during the exploration of the Amazon. The original Creature was essentially King Kong, but I want to make it more a ‘beauty and the beast’ fable. I want the look and feel to be akin to Jules Verne’s tales like 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. I want to increase the horror edge and make it really scary, because my archaeological explorers will discover an area of the Amazon that has been kept on a tangential track of evolution alongside mankind. So there will be giant carnivorous squid, prehistoric sharks and weird alternate lifeforms that shouldn’t really exist in such a fresh-water environment. Fish do truly have either an angelic or devilish quality, and I want to play on that. The Creature will be the Man of this exotic world,” del Toro explains. “He will be very smart and able to turn the tables on his human hunters. I have a scene where the hunters find fossil remains and realize that the Creature’s brain cavity is larger than a human one. He’s not the lumbering, roaring monster of Ricou Browning’s day, but a sophisticated Gill Man that will come to life through a mix of CGI and a man in a suit. In the original film, the Creature falls in love with the Julie Adams character. The twist in my version is that the girl will also fall in love with him. I want her to almost get it on with the Creature!”
- Guillermo del Toro
The reality is I would just love to see an update to the classic, done by the right person with the right motivations. I can’t think of anyone better for the job. I hope he ends up making it.
I was just listening to Kenna - Love Hate Sensation