Friday 26 April 2013

HBO option Guillermo Del Toro-produced horror drama MONSTER and 'The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death'

Friday 26 April 2013
Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) has attached himself to the potential HBO series Monster, based on the Manga comics created by Naoki Urasawa published between 1994 and 2001. Monster concerns a doctor on a search for the world's most evil sociopath (possibly the Antichrist), who is inhabiting the body of a 12-year-old boy the doctor saved from death, and now threatens the safety of billions.

The comic-books were originally going to be adapted into a movie written by Josh Olson (A History of Violence), but it proved too difficult because of the story's complexity. Del Toro will now co-write the TV pilot with Steven Thompson, and likely direct if HBO take it to series.

In related news, Del Toro is also producing a TV adaptation of Corinne May Botz's 2004 non-fiction book The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, about Frances Glessner Lee; a man who recreated macabre crime scenes using doll houses and thus influenced modern forensic investigations.