Guillermo Del Toro Opening His Own Production Facility, Calling It An 'Imaginarium' For Filmmakers
If there's one thing about Guillermo del Toro that shold be evident by now, it's that he is passionate about film and filmmaking. Perhaps to a excessive degree — it might explain how he gets committed to projects left and right. Now he's got a new project, and it is potentially something good for many filmmakers. Guillermo del Toro is opening Mirada, a company intended to be a workspace for filmmakers in which they can conceive, develop and launch their own projects. He's not doing this alone — also on the team are cinematographer and frequent GDT collaborator Guillermo Navarro, Mathew Cullen and Javier Jimenez.
Speaking to THR, the filmmaker said,
We really want to be a filmmakers' resource... I think the future of storytelling needs to be very, very rooted in tradition but very nimble toward the future, and that's the philosophy behind the company.
Mirada is a 25,000 square foot studio space in Marina del Ray, and houses facilities for animation, post-production, visual effects and " features an art department, a soundstage to facilitate traditional and virtual productions and a full camera shop." The space has a film legacy, as miniature effects work has been done there in the past for Blade Runner and other films.
Mathew Cullen, who will use the space to work on projects for commercial production company Motion Theory, said,
...this is not a special effects shop, it's more than that... It's not about one project or however many projects are going on at once from the commercial side all the way to the feature side. This is a place to drive those projects. This is a place to be able to support filmmakers' imaginations.
It sounds like Guillermo del Toro's own version of the facility that Robert Rodriguez has in Austin, TX, if perhaps larger and more open to a broad array of filmmakers. The intent is, in part, to create a space where disciplines can combine to make a broad array of projects more possible for various creators.
As the director told The Wrap,
I hate to use this word, but it's a boutique operation. We want to attract filmmakers and help them develop their ideas from the ground up. Not in a pipeline of production and not with a marketing view, but simply, how to build a story the best. That could be a short film, a feature film, a commercial, proof of concept — whatever it may be, you get all of us.
L-R in the header image: Mathew Cullen, Guillermo Navarro, Guillermo del Toro and Javier Jimenez. (Photo Credit: Zen Sekizawa.) The logo below was designed by Fables cover artist James Jean.
