Shadow and Bone fans won’t have to wait until the return of Shadow and Bone season two to see Ben Barnes on their screens again. It has been announced that he along with several other stars are set to star in a new Netflix anthology coming from Guillermo del Toro.
The anthology, titled Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, will have a total of eight live action stories. According to Deadline, here’s what we can expect:
A collection of live-action stories meant to challenge our traditional notions of horror. From macabre to magical, gothic to grotesque or classically creepy.
This series already sounds amazing, right? Also, we love Guillermo del Toro. He is literally one of the best directors of the horror genre to date and an absolute genius at what he does. If you have seen his films Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and my personal favorite, Crimson Peak, then you know he has a way of capturing the beauty amongst the horror. The cinematography of his films is breathtaking, and he takes the scary and humanizes it in ways that make the viewer understand the characters.
Anthologies, especially horror anthologies, are very popular. Shows like Black Mirror, Into The Dark, and American Horror Story are a few horror anthologies most of us are familiar with and enjoy, but we think that what Guillermo del Toro has in the works may rival them all. He’s an Oscar-winning director, after all, so our expectations are high with this.
Along with a superb producer, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities has quite the stellar cast list. We’re excited to see each and every one of them in this anthology, but I’m most excited to see Ben Barnes because I love him. He’s a phenomenal actor in whatever he’s in and apparently Guillermo del Toro thinks so too because according to Netflix, the director personally selected Ben as one of the cast members. How cool is that? We know Ben is going to KILL it.
Right now, we don’t have a lot of details about what Ben’s role will entail. We don’t know if he will be the villain or the good guy in this story, but a small part of us is hoping he gets to play a nice guy this time. The most recent villain he played is The Darkling in Shadow and Bone which is also on Netflix now. So far, we do know Crispin Glover will also star in the episode, which is written by Lee Patterson and based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. Keith Thomas is set to direct.
If you have seen Crispin Glover in anything then you know he’s good at playing the villain, too (See “Creepy Thin Man” in Charlies Angels and the even creepier Willard, in Willard). He and Ben are no strangers to playing villains, so the bad guy could go either way with this casting. Also, we don’t know which H.P. Lovecraft story their episode is coming from, but we will be keeping our eyes open.
In addition to Ben Barnes and Crispin Glover, other cast members, like Essie Davis, Glynn Turman, and Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham, have been added, and as mentioned in the article from Deadline, each of the episodes will be done by different directors. We can’t wait to see this anthology come to life. We also can’t wait to see what Guillermo del Toro has come up with for the two episodes featuring his original work.
Production for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which is executive produced by del Toro and Oscar winner J. Miles Dale, who also serves as co-showrunner, has already begun in Toronto. The anthology is set for a 2022 release.