Guillermo Del Toro says Crimson Peak will be gothic, violent and…kinky?

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

It's going to be a Guillermo Del Toro-centric couple of weeks with PACIFIC RIM coming out soon. There was news yesterday that HELLBOY 3 might happen but what about his next actual project, the haunted house film CRIMSON PEAK? Not much else has been revealed about it since Emma Stone dropped out of the film at the beginning of last month.

STYD talked to the director about CRIMSON PEAK recently and pretty much everything Del Toro had to say about the upcoming film was music to my ears. He says that CRIMSON PEAK will be very different from his previous English language films:

CRIMSON PEAK is a much, much, much smaller movie, completely character-driven. It's an adult movie, an R-rated movie, pretty adult. Shockingly different from anything I've done in the English language. Normally, when I go to do a movie in America for the spectacle and younger audience, for Blade or whatever. This movie's tone is scary and it's the first time I get to do a movie more akin to what I do in the Spanish movies. The thing I do in those movies is re-contextualization, take a movie and then move it into a completely different place. Like a Gothic and then move it into the Spanish Civil War [THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE]. This is a Gothic romance, haunted house, in the north of England.

Del Toro goes on to to talk about the tone for his new film and how it'll have a bit of kink in it.

(CRIMSON PEAK) Has moments that are very visceral, physical violence. You're in this sort of sedate romance and then there is this brutal moment where you're like, "Whoa!"  And it has a lot of kinky moments. The only kinky moment I've ever shot is the leg f*ck in THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE.  [laughs]  This has a little more kinkiness than that.

Has Guillermo Del Toro been reading Fifty Shades of Grey? Is Benedict Cumberbatch going to be spanking Mia Wasikowska throughout CRIMSON PEAK? Del Toro also mentions that they started looking for the house that CRIMSON PEAK will be set in a couple of months ago (obviously an important part of a haunted house movie) and it's looking fantastic:

The house is looking great. We started scouting two months ago and are deep into the design and it looks fabulous. Obviously, I'm going to buy a lot of the props [laughs].

CRIMSON PEAK certainly sounds like it'll be different from Guillermo Del Toro's other English language films but it is his Spanish and smaller films that originally drew me (and I'm sure countless other fans) to the director in the first place. So while it would be awesome if he did get to do AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS I'm just as excited for CRIMSON PEAK as I would be for that movie.

Guillermo Del Toro's next film PACIFIC RIM is out July 12th, 2013.