Guillermo del Toro is back with one of his favorite kind of films: Fantasy in a time of war. If the Spanish Civil War was the background conflict in the movies El laberinto del fauno (aka Pan’s Labyrinth) (2006) and El espinazo del diablo (aka Devil’s Backbone) (2001), in The Shape of Water (2017) the characters find themselves in the middle of the Cold War. As explained by actor Doug Jones in a promotional interview, “It’s a 1963 drama, it’s not a sci-fi film, it’s not a genre film, but I am a creature in it. I’m a fish man that’s kind of a one-off. I’m an enigma, nobody knows where I came from; I’m the last of my species so I’m like a natural anomaly. And I’m being studied and tested in a U.S. government facility in 1963, so the Russian Cold War is on, the race for space is on, so there’s all that backdrop and that undercurrent. I’m being tested for how can they use me for advantages in military or space travel or my technology can we make this usable for humans. So they’re trying to keep me a secret from the Russians”.
Besides Guillermo del Toro’s frequent collaborator Doug Jones, other names for the cast are Michael Shannon, Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Jenkins, Lauren Lee Smith, David Hewlett, Nick Searcy, Morgan Kelly, Dru Viergever, Maxine Grossman, Amanda Smith, Cyndy Day and Dave Reachill. The movie is written by Del Toro together with Vanessa Taylor, the author of the text for Divergent (2014).
Although many international release dates are still unknown, we have confirmation that The Shape of Water (2017) will be out in the USA, Canada and Mexico the 8th of December, and will be Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language.
If you don’t want to miss any update about the film, you can always follow its official Twitter account: https://twitter.com/shapeofwater
