Add another project to the increasingly crowded slate of auteur and busy-man Guillermo Del Toro. Deadline reports that the man behind Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, and Crimson Peak has signed on to produce — and possibly direct! — a film adaptation of the classic spooky children’s book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
First published in 1981, the books, written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell, are full of horrifying stories based on folklore and local mythology, and the illustrations are equally terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that Del Toro owns several of Gammell’s original prints. They’re probably to blame (or thank) for Del Toro’s attachment to this project, actually. Also, understanding his fandom of Gammell’s illustrations helps to explain the art direction of both Mama and Crimson Peak, which abandoned the surrealistic look of Pan’s Labyrinth in favor of wispy, very CGI-dependent monsters.
Del Toro was very recently attached to Trollhunter, a Netflix series in production at DreamWorks. Oh, and also to direct a remake of Fantastic Voyage . Add to that his producer duties on The Strain, and Del Toro is a very busy man.