Guillermo Del Toro (Photo : REUTERS)
After two failed ventures into the video game industry, the first being 2012's "Insane" and most recently, the highly-anticipated reboot to the popular video game series of the same name, "Silent Hills", screenwriter, producer, novelist and director Guillermo Del Toro vows never to work on video games ever again.
Del Toro teamed up with former Konami legend Hideo Kojima, the brains behind the popular Metal Gear series, to create a reboot of Konami's Silent Hill franchise. The project was titled "Silent Hills" and showcased the game running on Kojima Productions' FOX Engine.
The game was to feature the image and likeness of The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus and already had a "playable teaser" available on the Playstation Network.
After Kojima and Konami had a falling out however, Silent Hills was cancelled much to the dismay of Del Toro and video game fans all over the world.
In an interview with Playboy, Del Toro expressed his frustration with the video game business.
"If I join another video game, World War III will start. I have proven to be the albatross of video games. I joined THQ, and THQ goes broke. I join Kojima, and Kojima leaves Konami," said Del toro.
"I have decided, in order not to destroy anyone else's life, I have decided I will never again get involved in video games. Otherwise, I'll join someone and his house will explode, or something."
Just like the films he directs and writes, much work goes into making video games and part of that work is marketing it and selling it to the patrons. The 'business side' of it however proved to be too much for Del Toro to handle.
"I was in an apprenticeship. I learned a lot from Kojima-san, of course, and I learned a lot from my experience at THQ. I did. It changed the way I see narrative," said Del Toro.
"We put two years of work in THQ. It was insane. We mapped it out, we did the viable, we did the outlines, we did the screenplay. We did a bunch of stuff. I know some of the tricks, or the stuff that I wanted to learn, I learned. Then I went to the side of Kojima-san, because he's a master, and I can gladly say that we are friends and I love his work and I will continue learning from him as a friend. But I am not... if I join another video game, World War III will start."
Del Toro is best known for his fantasy and action films which includes the Hellboy series and 2013's Pacific Rim as well as the Lord of the Rings franchise "The Hobbit".
After Silent Hills' cancellation however, it appears Del Toro's dream of developing a video game is all but over.
"I can be creative about it, and I can be educated about it, and talk about it in a way that helps them make the video game. But no - I can't."
Despite the scrapping of Silent Hills, Konami states that it is still committed to developing the franchise in the future.
