Guillermo del Toro and ghost stories are a blissful combo.

If you’ve seen The Devil’s Backbone, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.  And if you haven’t… go blind buy it now!

That’s why the following announcement is so exciting:

Del Toro is planning to make a haunted house movie as his next directorial effort.

No, it’s not Disney’s Haunted Mansion remake; although he’s still attached to produce that.

The project is called Crimson Peak and it’s being produced by Legendary Pictures; the script is co-written by del Toro, Matthew Robbins, and Lucinda Coxon.

Although there isn’t an official logline, del Toro vaguely describes the project:

“A very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story. It will allow me to play with the conventions of the genre I know and love, and at the same time subvert the old rules.”

On Crimson Peak‘s spiritual grand-daddies:

“To me that is Robert Wise’s The Haunting, which was a big movie, beautifully directed, with the house built magnificently. And the other grand daddy is Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. I’ve always tried to make big-sized horror movies like the ones I grew up watching. Films like The Omen, The Exorcist and The Shining, the latter of which is another Mount Everest of the haunted house movie. I loved the way that Kubrick had such control over the big sets he used, and how much big production value there was. I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback.”

Source: Deadline NY