“Roughly 16 years gone”: How Guillermo del Toro wasted half his career and still became a modern great

Posted On October 9, 2025October 9, 2025

Throughout their career, every director picks up a handful of projects that they’re forced to drop for one reason or another, but few have played Hollywood hot potato more often than Guillermo del Toro.

For the filmmaker, every project is a passion project, with del Toro pouring his heart into everything he attaches himself to, whether it ends up getting made or not. It hasn’t slowed him down, though, with Netflix’s Frankenstein marking his 13th feature since he made his debut with 1992’s Cronos, which means he’s been averaging a new film every two and a half years or so.

That’s a decent batting average for any auteur, and it makes him more prolific than many of his peers, and his status as the only person in history to win Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Animated Feature’ speaks to his standing as a filmmaker who can weave between genres, mediums, styles, and tones, all while finding consistent acclaim.

However, there’s an argument to be made that del Toro would have helmed twice as many pictures by now if he hadn’t abandoned half of the titles he’s talked up at various points. That might scan as harsh, but he admitted so himself, revealing that he’d whittled away a decade and a half of his professional life on things that never came to fruition.

“By my count, I have written or co-written around 33 screenplay features,” he wrote on social media in 2021. “Two-three made by others, 11 made by me (Pinocchio in progress), so, about 20 screenplays not filmed. Each takes six-ten months of work, so roughly 16 years gone. Just experience and skill improvement.”

The most famous of his unmade movies is undoubtedly At the Mountains of Madness, which he’s persevered with for decades, even if it looks like a dead end. After all, if a three-time Oscar winner can’t get the green light for a blockbuster fantasy starring Tom Cruise and produced by James Cameron, what chance does anyone else have?

Among del Toro’s many, many, many, other unrealised flicks are the Kurt Vonnegut adaptation, Slaughterhouse Five, a fresh twist on The Count of Monte Cristo titled The Left Hand of Darkness, an Exorcist sequel, a live-action/CGI hybrid of The Wind in the Willows, a remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a third Hellboy, a new version of The Haunted Mansion, and, of course, The Hobbit.

As one of the most famously passionate filmmakers in the business, who won’t lend his name to anything unless he fully believes in it, del Toro immerses himself in developing ideas, sketches, models, and screenplays, regardless of whether the plug gets pulled, creative differences arise, or director and studio can’t reach a suitable compromise that results in a particular production getting the go-ahead.

He’s one of the few directors in the industry who gets their name plastered all over the marketing for their latest release because his aesthetic is so singular, immersive, and often irresistible to general audiences and cinephiles alike, which he’s accomplished while dealing with more false stars and shattered dreams than the average A-list filmmaker.

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