Guillermo del Toro Adds SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE To List Of Films He'll Never Make

 

Rev up that Guillermo del Toro hype machine from the same man that will be adapting "Monster" for HBO, Pinocchio, Frankenstein, Justice League Dark, Beauty and the Beast, Hellboy 3, At the Mountains of Madness, The Haunted Mansion, and seven other things you'll (sadly) never see, because now he's with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind writer Charlie Kaufman to adapt Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five", which was adapted before in the 1970's.

del Toro spoke with The Daily Telegraph (edition not yet online; source is The Playlist), and said that:

"Charlie [Kaufman] and I talked for about an hour-and-a-half and came up with a perfect way of doing the book," he told the Daily Telegraph. "I love the idea of the Trafalmadorians [the aliens of 'Slaughterhouse-Five'] -- to be 'unstuck in time,' where everything is happening at the same time. And that's what I want to do. It's just a catch-22. The studio will make it when it''s my next movie, but how can I commit to it being my next movie until there's a screenplay? Charlie Kaufman is a very expensive writer!"

This is also part of a 4-picture deal signed in 2008 according to The Playlist.

The synopsis for the 1972 adaption of Slaughterhouse-Five reads:

Listen: Billie Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." The opening words of the famous novel are the quickest summary of this haunting, funny film. Director Hill faithfully renders for the screen Vonnegut's obsessive story of Pilgrim, who survives the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, then lives simultaneously in his past as a young American POW, in the future as a well-cared-for resident of a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore, and in the present as a middle-aged optometrist in Ilium, N.Y.