Guillermo del Toro Takes on Van Helsing?

Now that he’s left The Hobbit, everyone’s asking “What’s super-brilliant director Guillermo del Toro going to do next?”  Pajiba says that he’s taking on Dracula-hunter Van Helsing.  That’s kind of ballsy when you stop to consider that Stephen Sommers pretty much ruined that name with his atrocious 2004 film.  Thankfully, Universal’s new stab at the character won’t be a remake but a completely new film based off a treatment by del Toro.  The new take will also be an action-horror film (although the “horror” in Van Helsing was in no way scary), but when del Toro takes on that genre, you get an awesome movie like Blade II.

But just to be clear: Pajiba does not say that del Toro will direct the film. At this point, he’s only producing and writing the treatment.  Del Toro also has plenty of other projects to choose from: He’s producing an adaptation of the DC comics character Deadman, Frankenstein, The Drood, The Witches, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Death: The High Cost of Living, and (fingers crossed) Hellboy 3.  But del Toro could direct traffic and I’d still watch.