Guillermo Del Toro came to San Diego Comic-Con to talk about Crimson Peak, and brought Tom Hiddleston along with him. Needless to say, Hall H went bananas. “We love you Loki!” screamed dozens of Hiddlestoners.
The **Pacific Rim **director was keen to bring things back on topic, kicking things off with a little bit on the importance of women in his new period romance-horror film. “Certain twists are a little more gender liberating [in Crimson Peak],” Del Toro said. “There is a secret gender war [out there] and there is a duty to take genres and change them a little. Also, it's scary. I wanted it to be scary and I wanted it to be gorgeous. I think it's the most beautiful movie I have made.”
Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston eventually joined Del Toro on stage after a generous trailer, and fan questions were quickly fired off.
Here's Tom Hiddleston's thoughts on the **Crimson Peak **set, which was constructed in Toronto: “I was very sad when they had to tear it down.” Del Toro actually had a favourite place in the house: “I liked the bathroom, it’s gorgeous.” This is despite the red devil monster thing that the audience had just seen come out of it moments earlier. “I Liked Lucille’s bedroom," said Chastain. who plays, um, Lucille. "It would be a spoiler to talk about it, but every corner of the room was so beautiful.” Intriguing...
All the panelists also talked about the exceptionally detailed character bios Del Toro gave them before production. “We all got given these extraordinary 10 page character biographies – I may have been 15 pages – but they are the most incredible documents," said Hiddleston. "The horrible time I'd had with my aunt when I was 13, my star sign... Guillermo has an enormous imagination, and getting to live inside it was a huge pleasure. [And by the way] I’ve never been teased so much on set as I have been with Guillermo. It’s like the movie Twins.” Del Toro added: “The actors don’t share their biographies, so secrets are kept.”
Towards the end of the panel, Del Toro gave his heartfelt thanks to Legendary and Universal for letting him make a movie like Crimson Peak. “I am very very happy to say that I felt completely free to make an adult movie in the Engish language and I hope you guys enjoy the hell out of it, and I would say.. ‘Hell yeah!’”
“The last act of the film is an emotional rollercoaster," was Hiddleston's last thought. "We all had to hold hands and battle through it. It can take it out of you some days...”
With Burn Gorman, Doug Jones, Leslie Hope and Jim Beaver also in the cast, Crimson Peak is out in time for darker evenings on October 16.