Age: 61
male
Guillermo del Toro Gómez (Spanish: [ɡiˈʝeɾmo ðelˈtoɾo]; born 9 October 1964) is a Mexican filmmaker, author, and artist. His work has been characterized by a strong connection to fairy tales, gothicism, and horror, often blending the genres to infuse visual or poetic beauty into the grotesque. He has had a lifelong fascination with monsters, which he considers symbols of great power. He is known for pioneering dark fantasy in the film industry and using insectile and religious imagery, his themes of Catholicism, and celebrating imperfection, underworld motifs, practical special effects, and dominant amber lighting. Throughout his career, del Toro has shifted between Spanish-language films—such as Cronos (1993), The Devil's Backbone (2001), and Pan's Labyrinth (2006)—and English-language films, including Mimic (1997), Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army(2008), Pacific Rim (2013), Crimson Peak (2015), The Shape of Water (2017), Nightmare Alley (2021), and Pinocchio (2022). As a producer or writer, he worked on the films The Orphanage (2007), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), The Hobbit film series (2012–2014), Mama (2013), The Book of Life (2014), Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019), and The Witches (2020). In 2022, he created the Netflix anthology horror series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, featuring a collection of classical horror stories. With Chuck Hogan, he co-authored The Strain trilogy of novels (2009–2011), which was later adapted into a comic book series (2011–15) and a live-action television series (2014–17). With DreamWorks Animation and Netflix, he created the animated franchise Tales of Arcadia, which includes the series Trollhunters (2016–18), 3Below (2018–19), and Wizards (2020) and the sequel film Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021). Del Toro is close friends with fellow Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, collectively known as "The Three Amigos of Mexican Cinema". He has received several awards, including three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and a Golden Lion. He was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, and he received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.
Godzilla is a 2014 American science fiction monster film directed by Gareth Edwards. It is a reboot of Toho's Godzilla franchise and is the 30th film in the Godzilla franchise. It is also the first film in Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse, and the second Godzilla film to be completely produced by a Hollywood studio. The film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston, Richard T. Jones, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Josh Duhamel, Paul Walker, Jesse Eisenburg, Anne Hathaway, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. In the film, a soldier attempts to return to his family while caught in the crossfire of an ancient rivalry between Godzilla and two parasitic monsters known as MUTOs. Godzilla was theatrically released on May 16, 2014, to generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for the direction, visual effects, music, cinematography, respect to the source material and the performances of Johnson, Cranston, Olsen and Eisenburg. The film was a box office success, grossing $529 million worldwide against a production budget of $160 million, print and advertisement costs of $100 million, and a break-even point of $380 million. The film's success prompted Toho to produce a reboot of their own and Legendary to proceed with sequels, with Godzilla: King of the Monsters released on May 31, 2019, and Godzilla vs. Kong released on March 24, 2021.
