Guillermo del Toro wanted to tell “the rise and fall of Jabba the Hutt”
The director was very enthusiastic about the idea of making a spin-off on the Star Wars character.
During an interview for the media Colliderfilmmaker Guillermo del Toroacclaimed for Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy Or The shape of waterlooks back on its spin-off project on the character of Jabba the Hutt, from the universe Star Wars.
A film dedicated to the famous giant larva is a rather unique project, but entrusting it to Guillermo del Torospecialist in monsters and oddities of all kinds, seemed to be a guarantee of quality: “It was telling the story of the rise and fall of Jabba the Hutt, so I was super excited. (…) We did a lot of things, and then it’s not my property, it’s not my money, and it ends up being one of the thirty scenarios that disappear. Sometimes I’m bitter, sometimes I’m not”, he explains.
This scenario is far from being rare in Hollywood, many projects at different stages of development, original or franchised, end their journey in the twists and turns of “development hell”, the limbo of aborted films. Guillermo del Toro nevertheless seems to put his disappointment regarding his spin-off on Jabba into perspective: “I always go to my team and say, ‘Good job guys. Well done. We created a great world. We created a great project. We learned.'”
The filmmaker therefore learns from his experiences, good or bad, successful or not, and opens up more widely to this philosophy of life: “You cannot be ungrateful with life. No matter what life throws at you, there is always something to learn. So you know, I trust the universe, I really do. When something doesn’t happen, I ask myself why and try to have a conversation with myself. Why didn’t this happen? And the more you swim against the flow of the universe, the less you know where you’re going.”
After the project on Jabba the Hutt was abandoned, Guillermo del Toro continued” with The shape of water. He suffered other disappointments linked to aborted projects, such as the sequel to Pacific Rim that he did not realize: “We were ready to do it, it was different from the first but it was a continuation of a lot of things I was looking to do. (…) They had to pay a deposit to reserve the film sets at 5 p.m., otherwise we wouldn’t have had them for months.”
What he feared happened: the film team did not have the sets in Toronto and had to organize filming in China, but the schedule no longer corresponded to that of the director, who was then engaged on The shape of water. The master of monsters is not discouraged, since he is currently working on an adaptation of the Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which will begin filming next February. A new creature added to his bestiary…
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