You’ll find no source of warmer love for Guillermo Del Toro than this guy right here, but no one can claim the man’s name on a project screams “YOU’LL BE SEEING THIS MOVIE SOON OR EVER.”

Del Toro is a man with many irons in many pies, and many fingers in many fires (or whatever), and while it’s a good strategy for always keeping busy, it can be a bit maddening for fans that get excited about idea after idea that doesn’t gain traction. One of the latest and most out-of-left field of those exciting projects is perhaps Heaven Sent or Justice League Dark (if they adopt the name of the comic series that began in 2011), which would give Del Toro the keys to DC Comics buffet of darker supernatural superheroes like Deadman and Swamp Thing.

We first learned of the development in November, and TotalFilm has gotten Del Toro to comment on the film in press rounds for Mama. Turns out things are measurably progressing!

“I am going to be presenting my storyline to DC and Warners of where I want to take this universe. We do have a writer, but until that is firmed up, I have to keep it a secret. I hope it happens… It’s going really really well. It’s like meeting old friends. I grew up with Demon Etrigan, with Swamp Thing, with Deadman, so these are characters that are near and dear to my heart.”

Now obviously that is still short of a greenlight, so seeing this hit screens is not a foregone conclusion. Still, this is a damn sight more uplifting than radio silence that has followed announcement of many Del Toro projects like, say,  Haunted Mansion for what has felt like years. The director also opened up to TotalFilm about his desire to stick with canon and exploit the “rich” mythology that has already been developed around each character.

I have a feeling Pacific Rim is only going to cement Warner Bros. in the Del Toro business, so that should be a fun pitch meeting, whenever it goes down. Here’s hoping.