Edinburgh City Council has shared its excitement at the prospect of an Oscar-winning director using the city to shoot his next movie.
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro shared an image of himself in Edinburgh white “scouting for locations" for his latest, as-yet-unconfirmed project.
The Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, The Shape of Water and Blade II director also posted a picture with artist Guy Davis, who has collaborated with him on previous projects such as 2022’s Pinocchio.
READ MORE: Pinocchio director Guillermo del Toro 'scouting for locations' in Edinburgh
Speculation mounted that the 58-year-old was scoping out places in the Scottish capital for a live action adaptation of Mary Shelley's gothic horror novel Frankenstein, which he is reported to be writing and directing.
Scouting for Locations… Day 4 pic.twitter.com/qiAEy8CjOP
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) April 5, 2023
According to Hollywood news site Deadline, Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth are in early talks to star in the Netflix production.
Commenting on news of del Toro’s visit, Cllr Val Walker, Culture and Communities Convener at City of Edinburgh Council, told The Herald: “It’s very exciting to hear that Guillermo Del Toro is considering Edinburgh as a potential location for a future project.
“We welcome filming in the city for the economic benefit, employment opportunities and the on-screen promotion it brings. It is a source of real pride that the beauty of Edinburgh attracts these kinds of projects. Our commitment to facilitating and supporting filming in the city is set out in our Filming Charter.”
Ken Massie, VisitScotland Head of Industry Development, added: “We know that screen tourism expenditure results in £55 million GVA (Gross Value Added) to the Scottish economy. And research shows that one in five international visitors have visited a film or TV location whilst on holiday abroad.
“We have already seen from films and TV shows such as Outlander and Harry Potter, that people want to visit real life places as part of their travel plans, and this can have a positive impact on visitors numbers and encourage a wider spread of visitors across the country, throughout the year.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here