Guillermo del Toro says he's almost done with live-action movies and will go all-in on animation

Guillermo del Toro has climbed the heights of gothic horror and thought-provoking monster cinema to nab the Best Director trophy at the Academy Awards, but his days as a live-action director are numbered. Coming off of a Best Animated Picture Oscar win for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the auteur is about ready to pivot to animation full-time, he shared at the Annecy animation festival (via The Hollywood Reporter).

“There are a couple more live-action movies I want to do but not many,” del Toro proclaimed. “After that, I only want to do animation. That’s the plan.”

The filmmaker has been insistent that the medium is not just for kids: “I believe you can make an adult fantasy drama with stop-motion and move people emotionally,” he reiterated at the festival. Blockbuster animated movies like Spider-Verse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Super Mario Bros. help give “a little more latitude, but there are still big fights to be had,” del Toro said. “Animation to me is the purest form of art, and it’s been kidnapped by a bunch of hoodlums. We have to rescue it. [And] I think that we can Trojan-horse a lot of good shit into the animation world.”

The Pan’s Labyrinth director is generally dismissive of “emoji-style” animation where everyone is “happy and sassy and quick,” preferring “to see real life in animation. I actually think it’s urgent. I think it’s urgent to see real life in animation.”

While he is currently working on an animated adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, del Toro by no means has a blank check. “They still say no to me. In the last two months, they said no to five of my projects. So it doesn’t go away. Making movies is eating a sandwich of shit,” he warned the audience. “There’s always shit, just sometimes you get a little more bread with yours. The rate of productivity against your efforts will remain frustratingly difficult, and frustratingly long. And you will always encounter assholes. But have faith in the stories you want to tell and wait until someone wants to buy them.”