Thirteen has become filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro’s lucky number after his latest movie The Shape Of Water picked up 13 Oscar nominations on Tuesday (23Jan18).
The sci-fi romance, about a mute woman who falls in love with a fish-like man, leads this year’s nominations, picking up nods for Best Picture and Best Actress (Sally Hawkins), while Del Toro is up for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director.
The thrilled moviemaker says, “What a morning. Thirteen is a great number now, and it’s happened to the best movie of mine, that I love.”
“It’s been such a long journey,” he tells Deadline.com. “Every time you take a risky mad dash on a premise like this – or like (previous films) Pan’s Labyrinth or The Devil’s Backbone – when you’re doing alchemy as delicate as this with genre, you never know. It can go either way. There is no hindsight in this. This is a contact sport.
“You go at it, and you clash with the material. The one thing you learn in a quarter of a century of doing this is there’s no such thing as a sure bet. So this is a really beautiful morning.”
Del Toro was forced to miss the Producer’s Guild of America Awards on Saturday (20Jan18), where The Shape of Water picked up the top prize, because he was in Mexico caring for his sick father.
Eight of the last 10 movies, which landed the PGA Award, went on to win gold at the Academy Awards.
Del Toro also took home the Best Director trophy at the recent Golden Globes and the film was also a big winner at the Critics’ Choice Awards, claiming Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score, and Best Production Design.
The film also won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September (17).
