Doug Jones is putting his gills back on for Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water

Go-to Hollywood monster man Doug Jones has opened up about his role in Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water. Talking to Collider, Jones has revealed that he’ll be playing the mysterious, government-captured fish man at the center of the thriller’s Cold War-era story, allowing us to totally high-five ourselves for calling that this would happen when Michael Shannon joined the film last year.

Of course, it’s not like our guess was some huge cognitive leap: besides his monstrous roles in Del Toro films like Pan’s Labyrinth, Jones has gone gilly for the director twice before, playing noble amphibian Abe Sapien in both of the Hellboy films. But The Shape Of Water will reportedly give the actor a chance to lend his considerable physical talents to a more romantic tale, with the film being described as a love story between Jones’ aquatic research subject and Sally Hawkins, playing a good-hearted cleaning woman who stumbles upon him. Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins are also expected to star.