Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy") made an appearance this weekend at The New Yorker Festival where he discussed his future projects in surprising detail. Coming Soon was on hand to catch the talk and took down the important notes and quotes.

First off del Toro is immersing himself in World War I documentaries and books because 'The Hobbit' "is a book born out of Tolkien's generation's experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse."

He's also being very careful about the design of Smaug the Dragon - "The design, I'm pretty sure that will be the last design we will sign off on, and the first design we have attempted. It is certainly a matter of turning every stone before figuring out what he looks like, because what he looks like will tell you what he is."

He freely admits that there will be different sensibilities involved in "The Hobbit" than in the 'Rings' trilogy and the 'Wargs' creatures in the novel, based on the demonic wolf in Nordic mythology, will be the "slender, archetypical wolf" rather than a hyena-shaped creature as previously described.

Finally he revealed that his plans for a new "Frankenstein" movie have little to do with Mary Shelly's original novel - "I'm doing an adventure story that involves the creature...it's not the central creation story."