Cinefantastique Online

Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Business blog reports that Guillermo Del Toro is in negotiation to produce MAMA, the feature-film debut of filmmakers Andy and Barbara Muschietti. Brother and sister Muschietti and currently writing an English-language screenplay for the Universal production, which is based on their short subject. Del Toro is expected to serve in a capacity similar to THE ORPHANAGE, which he previously helped sheperd to the screen.

The plotline for the full feature is being kept under wraps, but the short centers on two girls, Victoria and Lily, who are on the run from a ghostly woman who appears to be their mother in a Gothic home not unlike the one used by Bayona in “The Orphanage.”

In one ending to the short (there are in fact two closing sequences), the mother is seemingly vanquished, but one of the girls is herself turned into a ghoul.

Those familiar with the pitch say that, much like del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, it will contain an emotional as well as a horror element, since the girls are pursued by someone who at one time was their guardian and caretaker.