Guillermo del Toro is knee-deep in The Buried Giant and still choosing the hardest road on purpose: stop-motion, top to bottom. It is slow, it is brutal, and he clearly loves it. This week he checked in with a small but very loud update that basically says: we are pushing this thing as far as it will go.
The update (straight from GDT)
Replying to a post celebrating how vibrant stop-motion is right now, del Toro said on May 28, 2026 that his team is grinding away on the movie and bracing for more risk-taking. His words, not mine:
"We are working hard on BURIED GIANT. We have a lot of experimentation ahead. But this entire community never gives up- never abandons its faith: Made by humans for humans. Whomever joins this adventure is doing the animation Gods' work."
It is very him to turn a status report into a pep talk for an entire craft, and honestly, that tracks.
Why stop-motion again?
The Buried Giant adapts Kazuo Ishiguro's 2015 novel, and del Toro has been upfront since the jump that this one is a bear to make. He is sticking with stop-motion to keep the world and its creatures made of the same stuff, literally — a unified, tactile reality you can feel even when it is fantastical. He also said doing it that way will take years and it is incredibly difficult. None of that scared him off with 2022's Pinocchio, and it is not scaring him off now.
He is not subtle about AI
Del Toro has been hammering the same point in public: human hands matter. At a Frankenstein screening he flat-out yelled "F*** AI." At the Lumiere Film Festival he doubled down on the idea that his work is "by humans for humans." He has even nudged Hollywood to look harder at hand-made filmmaking — he shouted out Boots Riley's craftsmanship as something worth learning from. If you are wondering why he keeps circling back to stop-motion, that is the spine of it.
Casting note
Deadline reported that Ron Perlman has joined the voice cast for del Toro's adult stop-motion take on The Buried Giant. No surprise there — Perlman and del Toro have history, and this story has room for some gravel in the mix.
What we know right now
- The Buried Giant is a stop-motion feature in production from Guillermo del Toro, adapting Kazuo Ishiguro's 2015 novel.
- Del Toro says the team is "working hard" with "a lot of experimentation ahead" (May 28, 2026 update).
- Motivation for stop-motion: keep every creature and element grounded in the same physical material; it is painstaking and will take years.
- Recent track record: he just did this on 2022's Pinocchio.
- Philosophy check: he is loudly pro-handmade and anti-AI — "F*** AI" at a Frankenstein screening; calls his work "by humans for humans."
- Casting: Ron Perlman is on board for the adult stop-motion film, per Deadline.
Bottom line: expect The Buried Giant to be the kind of meticulously crafted, human-touch fantasy that takes forever because that is the point. Del Toro is not just making a movie; he is planting a flag for how movies like this should feel.