Guillermo del Toro wants to focus primarily on animation for the rest of his career.
Guillermo del Toro wants to focus primarily on animation for the rest of his career.
The Oscar-winning director can look back on a long and successful filmography. He has directed critically acclaimed films such as The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth and Nightmare Alley, as well as several blockbusters such as Pacific Rim, Blade II and Hellboy. However, del Toro has expressed that he now wants to focus on animation.
“There are still a few live-action movies I want to do, but not many,” del Toro said told the audience at the Annecy Animation Festival on Tuesday. “After that I just want to do animation. That is the plan.”
Why does Guillermo del Toro focus on animation?
This emerges from his new hit Netflix animated film, Pinocchio, directed by Guillermo del Toro. The stop-motion film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. “I think you can do adult fantasy drama with stop motion and you can move people emotionally,” said del Toro. “I think stop motion can be given intravenously, it can get straight to your emotions in a way no other medium can.”
He also cited the commercial success of animated films that year as a potential catalyst for more groundbreaking animated films. “The three hits Spider-Verse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mario move things around and give a little more scope, but there’s still big fights,” he said. “Animation to me is the purest form of art, and it was hijacked by a gang of thugs. We have to save it. (And) I think we can inject a lot of good shit into the animation world.”
His next film is an animated adaptation of The Buried Giant.