Sally Hawkins Heats Up Guillermo del Toro’s Cold War Movie with Leading Role

Guillermo del Toro has no shortage of professional projects in the air at any given time; between his planned Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark film, a program for Netflix called Trollhunters, and having to constantly dispel the rumors that he’ll return to direct a sequel for Pacific Rim or the Hellboy franchise, he keeps plenty busy. But that hasn’t stopped del Toro from continuing to pursue new creative avenues in his career, apparently exempt from our human need to take a second-long breather once in a while. The latest directorial challenge that del Toro has met head-on is a thriller set during the Cold War, and now he’s found himself an actress ready to take the plunge into the Red Scare with him.

Deadline reports that Sally Hawkins, Best Supporting Actress nominee by way of Blue Jasmine and star of 2014’s Godzilla, has agreed to star in the still-untitled film, with Best Supporting Actress winner Octavia Spencer currently in negotiations to join her. The item breaking this news gives a vague description of the planned film as “a mysterious and magical other-worldly love story set in 1963 America.” Unless the mysterious and magic element of this love story is that it takes place between two women, that means del Toro’s still in search of a leading man, and also that it’s unclear at present whether Hawkins or Spencer would play the romantic lead. But hey, don’t get us wrong, a G.D.T.-directed Cold War-set supernatural lesbian love story between Octavia Spencer and Sally Hawkins sounds like an incredible idea for a movie. Like Carol, but interracial and set a few years later, and also there will be magic or monsters or somesuch. Who wouldn’t see that movie?