Omnivore (lost storyboards for cancelled Guillermo Del Toro claymation film; 1990s)

Photo of Guillermo and Rigo Mora working on Omnivore.

Status: Lost

Omnivore was a claymation sci-fi film in production around the 1990s, meant to be Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro's first feature film, after making various short films. However, due to a break-in which occurred during the film's production, it was left unproduced and cancelled.

Plot

Guillermo states that the film was inspired by the works of Marcel Delgado, a Mexican sculptor, well known for his work on the original 1933 King Kong film. Described as a "underground comix type of story", it features a lizard man being birthed in a land in which everything is trying to eat everything else. The lizard man goes on a journey for a bright light shining in the mountains, where after falling in love and getting betrayed, he encounters a blob at the core of the mountain, being fed by monsters, where their victims get their flesh cooked.

Cancellation

During the film's production, 120 clay puppets and sets were completed by Guillermo alongside his brother and his current girlfriend at the time. However, after they had left the set for some hours, a break-in occured at the studio while they were outside, with almost every material from Omnivore being destroyed, with its puppets being mangled, alongside its sets and urine and feces being all over the floor. When Guillermo and his crew came back to the set, with most of the material being destroyed, the feature was abandoned, with Guillermo deciding to make Cronos, a live-action horror film, his first feature film.

Availability

According to an Indiewire article which heavely detailed the film's production, after the aforementioned break-in that occured, its storyboards, done by Guillermo, survived after the film's cancellation and were kept for many years. However, they have since gone missing due to Guillermo moving away various times, likely rendering Omnivore's storyboards as permanently lost. Interestingly enough, on September 24, 2015, on Guillermo's Twitter, he posted an early photo of himself alongside his "partner in crime" Rigo Mora, with the post detailing this photo being taken during shooting of a "clay animation epic that never was", likely reffering to Omnivore, with the added possibility that some footage from it was made, this however, as of now, goes unconfirmed.