“I didn’t do it”: Guillermo del Toro’s biggest regret would have averted one of modern Hollywood’s biggest embarrassments
If he’d made anywhere close to half of the movies he’s been attached to over the years before dropping out for one reason or another, Guillermo del Toro would be one of the industry’s most prolific filmmakers.
As it stands, he’s still not doing too badly on that front, with his 13 features from 1992’s Cronos to 2025’s Frankenstein seeing him average at a new release every two and a half years or so, which is a more rapid rate than many of his peers, and the quantity-to-quality ratio remains high.
By his own estimation, though, del Toro has wasted years of his career either writing scripts or developing productions that never happened, and that’s without even including the ones he was offered and turned down, and a couple of those have lingered in his mind as decisions he’s come to regret.
Individually, never helming one of the eight Harry Potter flicks is the one that stings the most, and he was living vicariously through Alfonso Cuarón as much as he could when he insisted that his fellow ‘Three Amigo’ take the reins on Prisoner of Azkaban when his initial reaction to the offer was dismissive.
Collectively, the only person to win Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Animated Feature’ rues the day he passed up on the opportunity he seems born for, and if he hadn’t declined, he could have saved the industry from one of its most embarrassing recent undertakings.
“I’ve said no to things that are enormous, and I’ve never looked back,” del Toro reflected. “The only time I repent I didn’t do something was in 2007, when Universal, in an incredibly gentle and beautiful manner, said, ‘Do you want to take over the Monster Universe?’ And they gave me the reins of several properties, and I didn’t do it.”
At various points, del Toro was attached to a movie about Dracula’s arch-nemesis, Abraham Van Helsing, and a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Obviously, neither of those came to fruition, and instead, the studio ended up green-lighting the absolute shitshow that was the short-lived Dark Universe.
Quite possibly the worst attempt at launching a franchise in memory, Tom Cruise’s The Mummy was awful, and that picture of him posing with Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe, and Sofia Boutella, all of whom were supposed to form pillars of the shared storytelling world, aged like milk.
It was a case of Universal trying to beat Usain Bolt’s 100-metre world record before it had learned how to walk, and to the surprise of very few, it imploded on impact and disintegrated at the first hurdle. Had del Toro been in charge, it sure as shit would have lasted longer than one movie, and it might even be going strong today, since he’s got monsters, ghosts, and ghouls in his blood.
