Guillermo Del Toro

There have been so many great adaptations of the Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. There has been a really good TV adaptation of the book which was a modern take called Jekyll and finally turning into Hyde. So a new direction to the whole book is really a must if it has to be endearing any longer.

Now my favorite director Guillermo Dell is listed to make an adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde after his much awaited Hobbit projects for which he will be getting help from Peter Jackson. So this director is going to be on my list for quite some time now.

Del Toro wants to flip the pertinent question of the narrative from “What does this monster, this manifestation of subconscious desire, take from Jekyll?” to “What is it that Hyde gives to him?”

“If you tell the story fully, you can not only see it as a story of repression, of the build-up of repression until it manifests itself like a monster,” Del Toro explained. “I think that Hyde — yes, he’s a creature of subterranean desire and all that — but it’s more than that. He’s an addiction.”

In the original narrative Dr Jekyll is not the wimpy push over he is so often portrayed as. He is a charismatic doctor, forceful and proud. He covers a shameful and secret life of cruelty.

“In every story of addiction, people seem to [underestimate] what the addiction does to the person,” Del Toro continued. “And what does Hyde give Jekyll that is so powerful? That can be explored.”

Del Toro also said that the period’s rich hypocrisy between private lust and public decorum as too ripe to update.

“My interest is to do a series of Victorian horror movies, because it’s part of the heritage that was getting lost. The more the merrier,” Del Toro said, also referencing his “Frankenstein” project. “That is ripe for a new exploration of the social, psycho-sexual stuff that makes the horror tick in that period.”

Del Toro seems to be loosing his mind in a really good way.

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