Guillermo del Toro brings his Gothic horror film Crimson Peak to Hall H at Comic-Con, along with cast members Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Hiddleston. In addition to revealing an extended trailer for the film, del Toro and his cast shared quite a bit of interesting news about it. Take a look at the panel recap below.

Panel Highlights

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  Del Toro asked the audience to ignore Hiddleston when he came out onto the stage, just for fun.

• Del Toro says he wanted to create a lush, lavish, Gothic romance film since it hasn’t been done in a while. He says that his strong wife (his highschool sweetheart) and daughters were his inspiration for making a more “gender-liberated” film, rather than falling into the trap of having a damsel in distress. He said there was a secret gender war that’s been going on for a while now and he wanted to tell a different story. He also wants it to be “scary and gorgeous.”

• He said Crimson Peak is already in the top three of the favorite movies he’s made and he thinks it’s the most gorgeous.

• Del Toro’s trying to stop swearing. And he manages to get through the whole panel without an F bomb!

• Look for a new experience based on the haunted hall of Crimson Peak coming to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal.

• This film marks the first time that del Toro was given the creative freedom to make the R-rated, English-language film that he originally intended.

Footage

A new extended trailer builds on the previously released look at the film, delving deeper into the bones of the haunted house and the mysterious relationships of those who dwell within it (Editor's Note: you can see the most recently released trailer above, though this will be different than the one described).

Using del Toro’s earlier comments about wanting to make a somewhat unconventional romance, that perspective sheds an interesting light on the events that play out. Edith (Wasikowska) is shown falling in love with Thomas (Hiddleston) more and more as the story goes on, while Lucille (Chastain) becomes evermore wary of and intimidating towards Edith. The secrets of the house slowly start to come to the surface: a bloody path leading to the house with blood that seems to seep up out of the ground, bloody water that flows through the pipes, wallpaper designs that seem to move on their own, locked rooms that hold horrors of the distant past, and an entity that is doing whatever it can to make itself present. There are quite a few effects at work – half-formed ghostly skeletons, a clawed hand reaching out almost lovingly toward the audience - that are equally beautiful and horrific, fitting in lockstep with some of del Toro’s best efforts in his career.

Audience Q&A

• Hiddleston speaks very highly of the practical set; Del Toro’s favorite part was the bathroom. Chastain preferred Lucille’s bedroom since every corner of it held something essential to the story.

• Chastain described Lucille as “fiercely loyal” and “acting out of love.”

• Hiddleston talked about testing people’s physical, emotional, and mental limits, and that the last 45 minutes provides those challenges in a very palpable way.