Skip to main content

Netflix lands horror anthology series from Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro

guillermo del toro
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Fresh off earning the Oscar statuette for Best Director (The Shape of Water) at the 90th Academy Awards, Guillermo del Toro has sold a new horror anthology series to Netflix.

The series, to be titled Guillermo del Toro Presents 10 After Midnight, will feature “a collection of personally curated stories that are … equally sophisticated and horrific.” Del Toro will reunite with Shape of Water producer J. Miles Dale, who will serve as executive producer on the project.  The series has no official target date or episode count, though based on the name, we’d be willing to guess there will be 10 chapters.

Del Toro is a veteran of the horror genre, having directed films such as 1997’s Mimic and 2001’s acclaimed The Devil’s Backbone. He’s well-known for a fascination with things typically considered creepy or gross — once even admitting to “a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things” — a sensibility made clear by creative costuming and special effects in films like Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy (not to mention Best Picture winner The Shape of Water, which received Academy Award nominations for cinematography, costume design, and production design, winning the latter).

The director also recently found financiers for his feature-length adaptation of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the popular children’s horror book series. Del Toro also has a healthy working relationship with Netflix, as evidenced by the success of Trollhunters, an animated series created and produced by Guillermo himself (in collaboration with DreamWorks), which has its third and final season due for release on May 25.

Del Toro was long rumored to be involved with the upcoming Amazon series Carnival Row, possibly as a co-writer, executive producer, and/or director, but he ended up stepping away from the project due to scheduling conflicts.

10 After Midnight will be Netflix’s first original horror anthology series (Black Mirror began on British Channel 4 before heading to Netflix for seasons three through five). It’s worth mentioning that del Toro (often through no fault of his own) has been associated with an impressively lengthy list of films, television series, and video games wthat never came to fruition. Given Netflix’s hefty resources and the popularity of Trollhunters, though, we’d be surprised if 10 After Midnight ended that way.

Editors' Recommendations

Nick Hastings
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Nick is a Portland native and a graduate of Saint Mary's College of California with a Bachelor's of Communication. Nick's…
Nightmare Alley’s Tamara Deverell on noir & Guillermo del Toro
An "Oscars Week" badge on an image of Willem Defoe in 'Nightmare Alley.'

Tamara Deverell has helped shape the look of some of the most notable films and television series of the past 20 years. From her early work as an art director on Bryan Singer's X-Men and Degrassi: The Next Generation to her current role as production designer on Star Trek: Discovery, Deverell has shown versatility in her field that is both rare and impressive.

Her latest project, Nightmare Alley, is a bit of a departure from her previous work. Leaving behind the futuristic spaceships of Discovery and the polished boardrooms of Suits, Deverell incorporated a variety of different looks and aesthetics from the 1930s -- Art Deco, Art Noveau, the paintings of Edward Hopper -- to bring to life Guillermo del Toro's noirish vision of Depression-era carnies, con men, and criminals. For her effort, Deverell was nominated for an Academy Award for her outstanding work, and she sat down with Digital Trends to talk about what it's like collaborating with del Toro, the challenges of doing both a period piece and a genre film, and how sets can reflect the interior lives of the characters that occupy them.

Read more
Nightmare Alley review: Guillermo del Toro delivers a bleak, beautiful noir
Bradley Cooper navigates a carnival funhouse in Nightmare Alley.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has a knack for making audiences uncomfortable in beautiful ways. Whether he's exploring human-merman romance in The Shape of Water or filtering the horrors of war through a dark, fairy-tale lens in Pan's Labyrinth, he always finds a way to drape darkness and depravity in a gorgeous, cinematic atmosphere that captures your attention and holds it there, no matter what unfolds on the screen.

Such is the case with Nightmare Alley, a neo-noir thriller co-written and directed by del Toro and based on William Lindsay Gresham's novel of the same name. The film follows an ambitious carnival worker who uses his training in reading and manipulating people to pull off one lucrative con after another and rise through society. When he partners with a cold, calculating psychologist in order to go after a wealthy, ruthless businessman, the former carny soon finds himself wrapped up in a dangerous game he can't afford to lose.

Read more
Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley gets its first, frightening trailer
Bradley Cooper in Nightmare Alley.

Stanton Carlisle can read minds "under the right circumstances." At least, that's what Bradley Cooper's character wants people to believe in the first trailer for Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley.

The first trailer for del Toro's thriller features Carlisle under the scrutiny of a lie detector test, choosing the right words that will allow him to bend the truth without admitting that he's a fraud.

Read more