The critically acclaimed director anticipated the movie’s financial shortcomings.
Visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro fails to limit himself to any one genre, with all of the stories he offers audiences managing to blur the lines between themes and tones to offer entirely unique experiences. One such experience was 2015’s Crimson Peak, his follow-up to the action-adventure monster movie Pacific Rim, with Crimson Peak being a gothic romance full of monstrous figures. Despite the acclaim that del Toro had earned with a number of his projects, Crimson Peak was relatively disappointing in its box-office performance, though the filmmaker recently opened up about how he knew the project was facing challenges as it was being marketed as more of a horror movie than a layered narrative.
“The thing that will always, pun intended, haunt that movie is that it was sold as a horror movie. But I remember distinctly, when we had the meetings [about promotion], they were all targeted toward getting the horror audience for the opening weekend,” del Toro explained to Vulture. “And I knew we were doomed! I was saying, ‘You should promote the romance, and you should promote the mystery. The last thing you want to do is promote it as horror.’ We were opening in October, and October is the month of Halloween, so I understand why it happened.”
He continued, “But, you know, it’s a movie that connects with the people who love it at an almost molecular level. Little by little, some movies gather their audience through the years. Some others are very successful right when they come out, then you don’t hear from them again. We can have every variation. I’m finding that I’m happier when I’m in a relationship with people who truly find a movie and own it.”
Crimson Peak follows the story of an aspiring author who is wooed by a mysterious stranger to a remote Gothic mansion built upon a red clay mountain. There, she must decipher the mansion’s many secrets, the mystery behind the ghostly visions that haunt her new home, and fight not only for her sanity, but for her very life.
The 2015 film performed somewhat positively with critics, sitting at 73% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, though its audience score is only at 56% positive. It went on to take in $75 million worldwide on a reported budget of $55 million.
Del Toro’s next movie, 2017’s The Shape of Water, similarly blended together a variety of themes and took home the Oscar for Best Picture.
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