Guillermo del Toro has said that the first time he ever really noticed a movie monster was when he took in a childhood viewing of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Long ago, he pitched Universal his idea for how to remake BLACK LAGOON: make it a Jules Verne-inspired period piece set during the Victorian era.
In making his new film THE SHAPE OF WATER, del Toro may not have used his idea for the BLACK LAGOON remake, but this sure looks like his own take on THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.
Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Stuhlbarg star in THE SHAPE OF WATER, which is described as an "other-worldly fairy tale" that plays out against the backdrop of the Cold War in 1963. Hawkins playsÂ
Elisa, a lonely mute woman who is trapped in a life of silence and isolation within the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works. Her life is changed forever when she and her co-worker Zelda (Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment.
That classified experiment is Jones as a fish man, or a Gill-Man, that Elisa strikes up a relationship with. While this is quite different from any CREATURE movie Universal made back in the day and it looks uniquely del Toro, this could be seen as an unofficial remake of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. This fish guy even comes from the same place the Gill-Man did, the Amazon.
Fox Searchlight will be releasing THE SHAPE OF WATER on December 8th.