In A Different Universe, Guillermo Del Toro Made Disney's Haunted Mansion Movie
If there was ever a match made in heaven, it was Guillermo del Toro and Disney's "The Haunted Mansion." Del Toro is a monster kid through and through. His fascination with the macabre has deep literary and cinematic roots, to be sure. He can break down the gothic artistry of Mary Shelley's writing or grapple with the problematic side of H.P. Lovecraft with as much intelligence and passion as the most respected college professor.
But del Toro's passion for genre goes way beyond the intellectual. It's his whole heart, which you can see in everything he's ever produced. He has a childlike love of ghosts and monsters and anything spooky, so of course he was the right person for Disney to hire to try to make a real version of "The Haunted Mansion" back in 2010.
His particular adaptation had a long history of stops and starts before he eventually departed the project, and Disney instead went with director Justin Simien and writer Katie Dippold. Their version made it out of development hell and onto movie screens this weekend, but that can't stop theme park and horror nerds like myself from dreaming about what could have been with a storyteller like Guillermo del Toro at the helm.
An odd time for the Mouse House
To really get an idea of what kind of movie we would have gotten had Disney and del Toro completed their collaboration, we're going to have to go back to 2010 when they first announced this project. It was a surprise reveal at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, complete with a nifty poster from artist Brandon Ragnar Johnson given out to 999 lucky fans featuring the iconic Hatbox Ghost.
In 2010, Disney wasn't quite in the same dominant studio position as they are today. This was before they bought Lucasfilm and just after they acquired Marvel, but this is still two years before "The Avengers." Don't get me wrong, Disney was still a powerhouse. Their "Pirates of the Caribbean" films were raking in money left and right, and both Pixar and Disney Animation were dropping huge movies that were both good and making tons of money.
But it is important to acknowledge that Disney as a movie studio was in search of its next big thing before settling into the Marvel/"Star Wars" cycle that would dominate most of the 2010s and early '20s.
Guillermo del Toro working his magic for "The Haunted Mansion" in the same way that Gore Verbinski did for "Pirates of the Caribbean" was one of the things Disney was banking on.
So, del Toro and his frequent co-writer Matthew Robbins ("Mimic," "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark") cooked up a script and began developing the movie. They announced it would be a 3D release (keep in mind this was just after the first "Avatar" came out and everybody and their mothers were chasing that 3D upcharge ticket money) and started the artwork process where the director had artists come up with over 40 pieces of concept art to help detail his vision of the movie.
'If you take the children, they will scream.'
From everything del Toro has said about the movie while it was in development, he wasn't going to pull any punches.
The tone of the "Haunted Mansion" attraction is a fascinating one because it's split between two ideas: "Let's be legitimately spooky," and "This is still a family ride." This can be traced to two key Imagineers who brought the attraction to life: Marc Davis and Claude Coats. Davis wanted the ride to lean more on the fun, comedic side, and Coats wanted it to live up to its name and be a scary ride.
Ultimately, we were left with a dark ride that embraces both the silly fun you expect from a Disney Park ride and one that doesn't mind traumatizing its younger guests (as it did to me when I rode it in my youth, a story which I detailed in my report from the 50th Anniversary of "The Haunted Mansion" celebration).
It sounds like del Toro was interested in doing the latter. Variety quotes him as saying, "We're not making a comedy. We will make it scary and fun at the same time. For me, 'Mansion' needs to be the haunted house movie for this generation."
The director cited Disney's history with darkness, specifically in its early animation with characters like the Evil Queen in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and the Chernabog from "Fantasia." He wanted to truly make a scary family film. "If you take the children, they will scream," he told the San Diego Comic-Con crowd.
A big star joins the project
Not much is known about the plot of his version of "The Haunted Mansion," but combing through interviews we can get an idea of where he was going. Talking with FearNet in 2010, del Toro spoke about his desire to make the world fit the Mansion, not the other way around:
"What I want to do is very unique. It's a whole world. It's not just plopping a haunted mansion in the middle of a realistic film. It's truly configuring the world for the mansion to exist for real."
We know that the Hatbox Ghost was going to be a central figure: del Toro described him as the spider at the center of the web of haunted mansions all over the world. It was also speculated that the Hatbox Ghost would travel to these other mansions via the Endless Staircase, a room on the attraction that was cut from the Anaheim park, but included in the Orlando version of the ride. Think the end of "Labyrinth" or any random M.C. Escher illustration.
We had some indications of starts and stutters for this project for the five years after it was announced, but in 2015 it seemed to pick up steam again when it leaked that Ryan Gosling was in talks to play the lead. Was he going to be the Hatbox Ghost?
Maybe, but the combo of Ryan Gosling and Guillermo del Toro was incredibly exciting, especially since Gosling himself is on the right side of history when it comes to Disneyland's annual "Nightmare Before Christmas" retheme of "The Haunted Mansion." If you haven't seen the video of him talking about being upset about the Christmastime reskin of the ride, then do yourself a favor and watch it.
We didn't get Gracey Manor, but we did get Allerdale Hall
Something happened between Gosling's involvement (and the fun day del Toro and Gosling had together at Disneyland that went viral) and when Disney pivoted to the Justin Simien/Katie Dippold version that is still shrouded in mystery.
We know that Robbins and del Toro brought on another screenwriter named D.V. DeVincentis ("American Crime Story," "Grosse Pointe Blank") to take a crack at the script, but what I heard from both Disney brass and del Toro himself in this period was they were still trying to crack the story. Knowing I'm a big "Haunted Mansion" fan, del Toro assured me at the time that he wouldn't make it if they weren't 100% rock solid.
So, it's possible they never quite got there with the script and that's what caused the project to fizzle with del Toro. It's also possible that Disney execs balked at the scary tone the director wanted to go for.
The movie they ended up making has some spooky elements to it, but it is very safely in the family-friendly zone.
If you want a good indication of what Guillermo del Toro's "The Haunted Mansion" would have looked like, you can always visit his 2015 ghost story "Crimson Peak."
Perhaps del Toro channeled much of what he intended to do with "The Haunted Mansion" into 2015's "Crimson Peak." On a story and tone level, the two seem very far apart, but you can definitely notice some pretty striking similarities between Allerdale Hall and Gracey Manor.
Whatever happened, Guillermo del Toro's "The Haunted Mansion" will forever go down as one of the big missed opportunities in genre adaptation.