Fox Animation Backs The Guillermo Del Toro-Produced Day Of The Dead Film, Now Called 'Book Of Life'

Briefly: Guillermo del Toro has been plotting an animated film based on the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration for the past year. Provisionally titled Day of the Dead, it has Jorge R. Gutierrez, co-creator of the Nickelodeon showEl Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, set to direct with the company ReelFX backing the film. Gutierrez and ReelFX took the project to del Toro, who saw enough potential in it to come on board as producer.

Now Fox Animation has come on board, too, and Fox will release the movie in a prime Halloween frame, on October 10, 2014. But with Pixar also set to make an animated Day of the Dead movie, del Toro & Co. are moving to separate the two just a bit. And so this film is now called Book of Life. We don't have more details at this point, and it will be a while, most likely, before we learn much more. But we'll be curious to see how this and the Pixar film explore the same basic spirit from what we have to assume will be very different angles. [THR]