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Guillermo del Toro wants to dedicate his time to making animated movies over live-action features in the future because he thinks it is "the purest form of art".
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar-winning filmmaker spoke about his career at the Annecy animation festival this week. He warned those attending his masterclass of some of the challenges the industry can present as he opened up about his rejections.
"They still say no to me," he admitted to the audience. "In the last two months, they said no to five of my projects. So it doesn't go away. Making movies is eating a sandwich of s**t. There's always s**t, just sometimes you get a little more bread with yours.
"The rate of productivity against your efforts will remain frustratingly difficult, and frustratingly long," he added. "And you will always encounter assholes. But have faith in the stories you want to tell and wait until someone wants to buy them."
The director revealed that he was going to heed his own advice and shift his focus to bringing more stories to the screen in animated form. "There are a couple more live-action movies I want to do but not many," he said. "After that, I only want to do animation. That's the plan."
Del Toro shared some insight into why he wants to pivot to animation full-time as he spoke fondly of the genre, citing Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem as adventurous examples of what is possible.
"The three hits of Spider-Verse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mario are moving things, allowing a little more latitude, but there are still big fights to be had," he said. "Animation to me is the purest form of art, and it's been kidnapped by a bunch of hoodlums. We have to rescue it. [And] I think that we can Trojan-horse a lot of good s**t into the animation world."
Del Toro's stop-motion reimagining of Pinocchio was a huge success for Netflix. It was released on the streaming service in December and received widespread critical acclaim as well as several accolades, including winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
He has already lined up another animated feature at Netflix, too. He is currently working on an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's fantasy novel The Buried Giant. Del Toro will direct and produce the film from a script he is co-writing with Matilda the Musical scribe Dennis Kelly.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
Cover image credit: Tibrina Hobson / Contributor via Getty Images.
