With a single tweet, Guillermo Del Toro just announced that all your childhood nightmares are coming to life. On Tuesday, Del Toro announced that the next project he is undertaking will be “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.”
First published in 1981, the trilogy of books is an anthology of creepy tales about things that go bump in the night, written by Alvin Schwartz. The first book alone was a collection of 29 different scary stories that made a generation of readers afraid to turn off their lights at night.
It is still unclear if Del Toro will be taking the director's seat for the project or overseeing it as a producer. Nevertheless, the news still comes as a great consolation, particularly to those who were disappointed that his collaboration with Hideo Kojima on Silent Hills did not push through, which was suppose to feature “The Walking Dead” star Norman Reedus.
I start development on a film based on a favorite book of youth: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark! pic.twitter.com/yu31FkCz4K
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) January 14, 2016
Del Toro fans are certainly hoping that he will take the helm as the director and lend his vision and styling to the monsters of every child's worst nightmares.
Already known for bringing monsters to the big screen in visually stunning movies like “Hellboy,” “Pan's Labyrinth,” and “Crimson Peak,” we can't wait to see what he will come up. Especially when the “scary as "s---” original illustrations for the books by Stephen Gammell get the Del Toro treatment.
The illustrations Gammell created were actually one of the reasons why the "Scary Stories" books were once banned from the shelves of public libraries by the American Library Association. They were deemed “too terrifying” and were even replaced in the reprint of the books in 2011 with artwork by Brett Helquist.
The screenplay for the film adaptation of “Scary Stories” will reportedly be penned by John August, best known for his work on “Big Fish” and “The Nines.”
Both of those acclaimed films used multiple perspectives as a storytelling device. So, it will be interesting to see what he will come up with for the narrative of "Scary Stories" the movie, if there are 80 different tales from the book to choose from.
