Speaking to Collider about his proposed Incredible Hulk TV series and his attitude to superheroes generally (he likes them weird, it turns out), Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro revealed that he met with Marvel Studios to discuss taking on the Thor movie long before Kenneth Branagh, and more recently met with Hugh Jackman to consider The Wolverine.
“Over the years, when Avi Arad was in charge of Marvel, I often had the discussions with him,” explained del Toro. ” I came very close to doing Thor because I really wanted to bring the Norse mythology…
“It’s something I’m very attracted to. Create the giants and create the more fantastical version of that. But it’s not like I have many meetings with studios discussing superhero movies. They come to me. Normally I pass, respectfully or not. They like it, that we have a very quick response. I was very attracted to doing The Wolverine in Japan, because that’s my favorite chapter in the story of Wolverine. But I’m not a superhero guy. It’s very hard for me to… It’s one thing to like something and another to marry it for two, three years.
“I spoke to [Fox executive] Jim Gianopulos a while ago. I thought about it. I actually met with Hugh Jackman. But it’s one thing to say… You have to differentiate between loving it as a fan, which is almost like dating, and creating it from scratch, which takes two to three years of your life, which is like a marriage.”