Guillermo Del Toro Casts His 'Frankenstein' and 'The Hobbit'!

Don't ask me how Guillermo del Toro works on four hundred projects at once, because it always amazes me to see how much he's got going on, and it's also inspiring to see a filmmaker that passionate about creating and conceptualizing and coming up with awesome new things for the world and his fans. Guillermo del Toro is exactly the kind of guy we want handling some of these more fanboy-ish properties because he's a true geek -- and while other filmmakers are using their celebrity status to attend parties at the Playboy mansion, this mofo is designing creatures and drawing in his sketchbook and working hard to please us.

Round of applause before we move on ...

In a new interview on BBC Radio, Del Toro let loose that he's already cast friend (and collaborator) Doug Jones as Frankenstein in his planned adaptation of the classic tale, and will begin testing things like make-up within the next few weeks -- though he admits (to Digital Spy) that he's "not in a hurry" and is perfectly fine shooting the film five or six years from now. "You have one shot in your lifetime at these things and I don't want to do it the wrong way."

As far as The Hobbit goes, Del Toro confirmed to BBC that Ian McKellan is back, as well as Andy Serkis and Hugo Weaving, all of whom will be reprising their roles from the original trilogy. The writer-director also confirmed that there will only be two Hobbit movies, not three, which is a fact that was revealed earlier this year.

News on Del Toro's other projects after the jump.

• The Strain -- He says he won't be adapting this into a feature film because it would require, like, six movies. He says they should do a comic series or a TV series, though.
• Hellboy 3 -- Ron Perlman doesn't want to wear the Hellboy get-up anymore, so Del Toro says it probably won't happen.
• Blade -- Since Wesley Snipes and New Line won't speak anymore, this probably won't happen either ... at least not with Snipes and probably not with Del Toro.
• Jekyll and Hyde -- Del Toro will only be producing this one, not directing.
• At The Mountains of Madness -- Script is done, but no one seems to want to finance it right now. Del Toro stresses that he will do what he can do find some money to make it. Same goes for The Witches.

Finally, MTV recently chatted up Del Toro, and he revealed just how close he came to directing Marvel's Thor. He says, "They approached me for Thor. And for a long time we talked about that, because the mythology and the images were very attractive to me. I'm a fan of [Jack] Kirby and the power he has, and I'm a fan of the original mythology. So I thought we could go back to the original mythology a lot. I love Loki, I think he's a great figure." Del Toro said this was before Hellboy II came about. I don't know about you, but Thor would've been a great project for Del Toro. Then again, we probably wouldn't have him directing The Hobbit.

Discuss: Which future Del Toro project are you looking forward to the most? And would you rather see him direct The Hobbit or Thor?

[via Slashfilm, The Playlist]