New Pet Theory: Guillermo del Toro is "Movie Geek Christ" - the Film Gods allow him and his various passion projects to be repeatedly crucified for the sins of all other projects, so that they might live to see a greenlight.
Today's round of whippings: "Pacific Rim," the Kaiju-tribute giant-monster movie he signed onto when "At The Mountains of Madness" as refused a go-ahead by Universal, is now going to need an extensive rewrite to remove references to destruction in Japan - for obvious reasons. Making things stranger, Legendary Pictures (the producers) are apparently leaning HARD on del Toro to also rewrite the script so that the "main" monster is Godzilla, rather than whatever the original was.
"Rim" started out as a hotly-pursued spec-script in which a portal to another dimension opens up in the ocean and starts spitting-out Godzilla-style giant monsters, which humanity (apparently) resists using giant robot battlesuits. That THAT premise can now be an original spec that becomes a bidding-war blockbuster is kind of wonderful.
The no-more-Japan thing makes total sense... but the Godzilla angle sounds suspiciously phony. Everyone knows that Legendary bought "Rim" at first looking to possibly rewrite it into a Godzilla movie... except they later signed "Monsters" Gareth Edwards to a straightforward Godzilla reboot a few months ago. For this to be true, they'd have to have canceled Edwards' project, or is this more of a crossover/cameo thing?
Either way, not good news - because del Toro's general reaction to studio interference is to just pack up and move on... and it's getting to the point where I'm worried the guy might just up and retire at this point.
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