With Pacific Rim, his first feature as a director in five years due out this summer, the always busy Guillermo del Toro is preparing to jump right into his next feature, the haunted house thriller Crimson Peak.
Word comes from Variety today that Benedict Cumberbatch, the British actor who plays the villain in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness and in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” trilogy, will be joining Emma Stone and Charlie Hunnam for Del Toro’s next film.
Hunnam is already returning to the del Toro fold after starring in Pacific Rim, but at this point, not a lot is known about the mysterious ghost project co-written by Del Toro and Matthew Robins with Lucinda Coxon joining Del Toro in the rewrite phase.
The project also reunites Del Toro with Legendary Pictures who financed Pacific Rim, with Universal Pictures waiting in the wings to possibly come on board to finance and distribute. Plans are for filming to begin in February 2014.
Besides the aforementioned tentpole films, Cumberbatch will also be appearing in Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years a Slave and August: Osage County before year’s end while also playing Julian Assange in the currently-filming The Fifth Estate and shooting the third season of BBC’s popular series “Sherlock.”
