Guillermo Del Toro…?

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49337

Kermode says Pan’s Labyrinth’s director was briefly attached to Dominion — I think (skip down for the quote). He could’ve done it, methinks. My personal evidence: SEE THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE! Oh yeah, and he likes THE NINTH CONFIGURATION. 😛

“State of grace

Del Toro had such a passion for Hellboy that he pursued the project in favour of a chance to direct Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban . He also wrestled briefly with the ill-fated Exorcist prequel Dominion (aka Exorcist: The Beginning ), the prospect of which appealed to his lapsed-Catholic sensibility. “One of the most important movies in my life, emotionally,” he says, “is William Peter Blatty’s Twinkle, Twinkle “Killer” Kane [aka The Ninth Configuration ]. It’s a movie about redemption through sacrifice and the giving of your blood to save others that speaks to the soul of somebody who believes in a messiah. It deals with the fragility of faith, which is essential to Blatty’s work – how faith is almost intangible and yet incredibly strong. And I think it affected me because, although I am no longer a Catholic, I share the belief that there is a state of grace that can be reached not through moral purity but through almost ethical purity – by being yourself and being immune to the world. It’s a little ascetic, but it’s essentially the thesis of Cronos . In that film the girl who does not mind dying is the truly immortal character. And the character played by Federico Luppi becomes immortal at the moment he decides to die, the moment he says: ‘Fuck it, I don’t want to kill my granddaughter.’ Immortality doesn’t mean you live longer; it means you are immune to death. I think that’s the same thing that occupies Blatty: faith, the state of grace, immortality, redemption. And these are things that are important for me too.”

M.I.K.E.