Guillermo del Toro's exit from Justice League Dark is the latest in a long line of films, video games and TV shows that have gotten away from the Pan's Labyrinth director.
At times, the filmmaker feels like the Hollywood equivalent of The Fast Show's Unlucky Alf - frequently attaching himself to fanboy-friendly properties before seeing them vanish into the wind. We take a look back at the multiple del Toro projects that never made it to the starting line below.
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1. Hellboy 3
Fans have been calling for a third Hellboy movie for years – the problem being that the series' moderate box office success has never quite been a match for its critical acclaim. Still, Del Toro had a story idea in place, as very clearly set up in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
And the surprising news came in May 2017 that a new Hellboy film was in the works. The catch? Del Toro was not involved, with The Descent's Neil Marshall the reboot and Stranger Things' DAvid Harbour donning the broken horns and giant fist in the place of Ron Perlman.
2. Pinocchio
Del Toro began talking about his Pinocchio movie in 2008. Based on artist and writer Gris Grimly's adaptation, it was going to be a stop-motion movie made in collaboration with the Jim Henson Company.
After years of teasing its progress, guess what? It's not happening. So we'll never get to see the fascist Italy-set, "perverse and spooky and semi-necrophilia" take on the children's classic.
3. Justice League Dark
The flip side of the regular, primary colours Justice League heroes, DC Comics' Dark united such disparate characters as Deadman, Zatanna, John Constantine and Swamp Thing. Del Toro penned a script for the film but reportedly dropped out to focus on Crimson Peak and Pacific Rim 2.
In classic del Toro fashion, he eventually dropped out. Edge of Tomorrow's Doug Liman stepped in, but in May 2017 he also dropped out, leaving this as another DCEU movie without a director.
4. Halo
An avid gamer, del Toro was at one stage attached to direct the live-action Halo movie. The project has still never materialised (despite a concentrated push from Peter Jackson with Neill Blomkamp at the helm), but del Toro's version is the one that piqued our interest the most.
He teamed with Game of Thrones co-creater DB Weiss to craft an all-out war epic with Master Chief at the centre. "I think Halo is perfect to be recreated in movie form, but there are not many properties that are that translatable," he later told Collider of the project.
5. Silent Hills
Del Toro teamed up with Konami and video game legend Hideo Kojima to work on Silent Hills, a franchise continuation that was teased with the chillingly brilliant PS4 demo PT.
However, Konami ended up cancelling it in a wide franchise cull as the company shifted focus to mobile games. "It was a sort of scorched earth approach. It was not a gentle and ambiguous cancellation," del Toro told IGN.
6. The Hobbit
It's crazy to think of anybody but Peter Jackson venturing into Middle-earth on the big screen, but it almost happened with del Toro on The Hobbit movies. He spent three years working with Jackson on the project before MGM's ongoing financial woes prompted him to walk away.
Del Toro has a screenplay credit on all three Hobbit films, although during his tenure the story was going to play out across two movies instead of three. His version would also have included a role for Ron Perlman. But as who, we wonder?
7. The Champions
Remember cult British TV show The Champions? Del Toro was slated to direct a big screen remake after the first Hellboy movie hit. The show's concept - three secret agents who possessed superpowers - seems tailor-made for the big screen, but despite del Toro's involvement the project fizzled out as studio United Artists experienced turbulence during the Tom Cruise/Paula Wagner years.
8. The Incredible Hulk TV series
The Marvel TV universe is gradually taking shape thanks to Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter and Daredevil, but things could've looked a lot different if del Toro's Incredible Hulk series had taken off at ABC.
The filmmaker developed a small-screen take on the character in the years before SHIELD happened, however the audience love for Mark Ruffalo's Hulk in The Avengers brought the del Toro series to an end.
9. At the Mountains of Madness
Perhaps the del Toro passion project, At the Mountains of Madness would've been the director's big screen take on HP Lovecraft's classic novella. Initially set up at Warner Bros before moving over to Universal (perhaps a more apt home considering the studio's monster movie legacy), a spiralling budget put the brakes on this lost del Toro epic - even with Tom Cruise in the lead role and James Cameron as producer.
Del Toro lamented the loss of the film in an interview with Deadline, saying studio's were too focused on profit margins. "What is really dramatic to me is that most decisions are now being taken by comps, and charts, and target quadrants," he said. "Marketers and accountants seem to be running things and less and less of the decisions are in the hands of filmmakers."
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Movies Editor
Simon has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, writing on staff and freelance for Hearst, Dennis, Future and Autovia titles before joining Cision in 2022.
