Movies
Del Toro’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ a Story of Addiction
Guillermo del Toro has to be one of the hardest working men in Hollywood as he has more projects lined up than I can count on my two hands. Alongside THE HOBBIT, there has been a lot of chatter about his obsession with the Victorian horror films as he’s slated to direct his own versions of both FRANKENSTEIN and DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Inside you can read about Dr. Jekyll’s addictive personality…
Del Toro tells MTV that he wants to flip the pertinent question of the narrative – from “What does this monster, this manifestation of subconscious desire, take from Jekyll?” to “What is it that Hyde gives to him?”
“If you tell the story fully, you can not only see it as a story of repression, of the build-up of repression until it manifests itself like a monster,” Del Toro explained. “I think that Hyde — yes, he’s a creature of subterranean desire and all that — but it’s more than that. He’s an addiction.”
An interesting question that might be explored is, could it be that Jekyll actually likes turning into Hyde?
“In every story of addiction, people seem to [underestimate] what the addiction does to the person,” Del Toro continued. “And what does Hyde give Jekyll that is so powerful? That can be explored.“
It’s no secret that Marvel has struggled immensely to launch a new Blade movie, but recent comments from Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige and Blade actor Mahershala Ali indicate they’ve thrown in the towel on this reboot for good.
Ali was attached to Blade from the start, when it was initially announced in 2019. Mia Goth’s attachment was initially announced three years ago, and both remained on board even as the project faced a series of setbacks that included lining up Bassam Tariq, and later Yann Demange, to helm the film.
Ali and Tariq teamed up recently on a new feature set to arrive this fall, in the wake of Blade‘s constant stalls. And it’s a film the actor wouldn’t have been able to do if Blade was still happening.
“When I look at this and ‘Blade,’ I couldn’t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me,” Ali told GQ. “And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for ‘Blade.’ In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level, just in my own journey between me, myself, and I.”
The comment is in partial response to Feige, who last week told the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala. We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique. It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great.’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time. We didn’t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn’t feel confident that we could do that on ‘Blade,’ and we didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”
So where does that leave Blade?
Feige’s comments certainly indicate that Marvel has thrown in the towel, but if they do make another attempt at Blade, it won’t be with Ali. The actor has officially walked away from the role.
“When I look at what is for me, is it was either this or that — and I’ll take this. No offense to them. I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not. For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on, and I have moved on,” he told GQ. “Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie.”
That certainly puts the final stake in the project.
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