Guillermo del Toro, who alongside Christopher Nolan (man, I wish he would do one of these articles too!) is the most exciting director in the business today has his next nine years of directing all sewn up according to Variety.

This is what we can look forward to from the talented Mexican maestro…

For the next four years, two movies based on The Hobbit and bridging the gap between Tolkien’s first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“No one expected ‘The Hobbit’ to come about; it was the most marvelous monkey wrench tossed into my life,”

While we are on the subject of The Hobbit, Variety have revealed that del Toro is not in New Zealand with Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh for most of the writing stages of the film. He is only present for a short period of time every three weeks and does the rest of his consulting via video conferencing.

Then his next projects are likely to all be for Universal, the studio he has enjoyed a close relationship with since they agreed to finance his most personal and self indulgent (I don’t mean that particularly as a cite) film to date, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

The first film is a new announcement. An adaptation of Dan Simmon’s upcoming novel Drood, which is one of those “real life historical figures in a fiction story based on half true events”, this time the subject being Charles Dickens…

Set when Dickens was 53 in 1865, the book revolves around the dark and mysterious life the world’s most famous novelist endured which included nights with sordid mistresses’, a deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder and other such bleak subjects which were all fed into the author’s final and unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Supposedly this all came about in Dickens’ life after surviving a horrific train crash

A more straight laced thriller narrative for del Toro then but I love 19th century London and more accurately, I would love to see this director’s dark version of Charles Dickens’ 19th century London.

Then it really is take your pick out of several projects, the two most personal pet projects the one’s I will discuss first. Going with a new take on Frankenstein first…

del Toro’s take would be based on a 1983 released book of Wrightson’s illustrated Frankenstein and has been out of print for sometime.

The film is also expected to be based on Frank Darabont’s 1994 draft which was heavily re-written and changed for Kenneth Branagh’s over-dramatical and disappointing adaptation. del Toro originally flirted with the idea of using Frankenstein in a Hellboy movie but I think now he’s at “the home of the Monsters”, he would be given free license to go with an out and out adaptation and he would enjoy that more.

“To me, Frankenstein represents the essential human question: ‘Why did my creator throw me here, unprotected, unguided, unaided and lost?’ ” del Toro said. “With that one, they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands to prevent me from directing it.”

The other pet project then being an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness which he came THIS close to directing at the beginning of the year but a case of the writer’s strike then a lack of faith from Universal in financing his take, haulted the project.

The original novel has influenced del Toro, I think, more than anything else in his childhood and growing up. This is to him, what Peter Pan was to Spielberg or the “Gangs of New York” era of American history to Marty Scorsese. Let’s just hope he doesn’t leave it too late in his career to make this movie, like the above two directors did which led to varying degree’s of success.

Other projects he has recently found great interest in, are aan adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…

For his version of the much adapted tale, he wants to stick as closely as possible to Robert Louis Stevenson’s original writings and “explore the addictive high the repressed Jekyll experienced as his murderous alter ego”.

The there’s Slaughter House-Five, an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel about a prisoner in a German WWII POW camp who travels through time and space.

The book has already been adapted into a film in the early 70’s by director George Roy Hill, though it’s not said to be a patch on the novel. Neither the book or the film am I all that familiar with.

Then we can’t forget a follow-up to Hellboy II, which just like the original, was well received and made a profit but didn’t find that really big summer tentpole audience. It made money, but with $100 million worldwide from a $85 million budget, you have to wonder if it is worth the bother?

“I think they’ll decide when the last euro hits the piggybank,” del Toro said. “We laid the groundwork to have a magnificent third act. I’d like to return to an action franchise with 60-year-old actor Ron Perlman, because he’ll be scratching at that age when I get to it.”

At this point, I can only see Universal giving him Hellboy III (possibly with a smaller budget) as a way to please him for the rest of the filmography they want him to create over there.

Two further projects which might not take so long to come to fruition are Hater, a film adaptation of David Moody’s graphic novel we told you about in December 2007 and the Gothic romance Crimson Peak based on a mysterious spec script by del Toro and his Mimic collaborator Matthew Robbins

Both will be produced but not directed by del Toro.

Not mentioned in the trade is Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, an adaptation of a 70’s t.v. feature which del Toro will produce and co-write with comic book writer/artist Troy Nixey making his directorial debut on the project. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is setup at Miramax and we spoke about it on July 30th 2008.

And not mentioned in Variety’s article and presumably “not going to happen anymore” are projects we have previously discussed…

THE CHAMPIONS (setup at United Artists and based on the 60’s British cop drama, and is such an odd choice of project when you look at everything else he is wanting to adapt. Looks like this one is dead anyway).

RUNOFF (based on the horror/thriller/comedy graphic novel, depicting a town you can never leave but again that one looks unlikely).

SATURN AND THE END OF DAYS (low budget film following a kid named Saturn who watches the end of the world whilst walking back and forth to the supermarket. No studio or real knowledge on the film is available except the quick mention from del Toro back in April).

And 3993 which before At the Mountains of Madness and the like, was his big pet project, a Spanish based ghost story during the height of the civil war. But we haven’t heard anything on that one for a LONG time (actually before the beginning of this site I believe).

One project he won’t be developing is Tarzan, which he was desperate to do and might well have done before Peter Jackson came calling last Christmas. That project is now in the hands of Stephen Sommers as of yesterday.