Vampires were probably the least exhausting part of making Blade II as Guillermo del Toro spent months in Prague turning Wesley Snipes’ Daywalker sequel into a blood-soaked collision of martial arts, elaborate sets, mutant Reapers, and practical creature work.

Production ran from March to July 2001, while del Toro later remembered seeing little of Prague because his routine largely consisted of going from the set to bed and straight back again. He described the production as a seven-day affair, while David S. Goyer recalled the growing pains of bringing a movie of that scale to Prague.

Somehow, del Toro found fuel for it all. About 40 cans of it every day.

Guillermo del Toro was drinking around 40 Red Bulls every day

During IGN’s recent IGN30 Icons interview with Brian Altano, Guillermo del Toro revealed that his Blade II survival strategy involved an astonishing amount of caffeine.

“Redbull had just come out and I did not know how to use it so I was drinking, and I am not joking, about 40 Redbulls a day,” the filmmaker recalled. 

Red Bull was still novel enough to del Toro that restraint apparently never entered the building. He remembered ordering cases for the production and handing cans to background performers as well, describing the atmosphere with the wonderfully unhinged line,

“I was like in a c****** movie.” he told IGN. The story becomes even wilder once medical advice enters the picture. Guillermo del Toro said that after returning to America, his doctor warned him against consuming more than four cans. His Prague-era total had been roughly ten times that figure.

The insanity at least accompanied a film that found an audience. Blade II earned about $155 million worldwide from a reported $54 million production budget after opening in March 2002. Its Prague shoot also produced the sprawling sewer environments and Reaper imagery that helped establish del Toro’s distinctive monster sensibility within a major studio franchise.

Now more than two decades later, del Toro still has enough energy left to fight another battle, this time on behalf of someone else’s movie.

Guillermo del Toro jumps to Digger’s defense

Guillermo del Toro recently turned his attention toward Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell in a satirical story built around an ecological catastrophe. The film arrived to sharply divided critical reactions, with praise for its ambition sitting alongside criticism of its sprawling, confrontational approach.

When IGN promoted its review by suggesting that the theatrical experience would do little to change skeptical viewers’ minds, del Toro fired back on X. He called the headline “entirely petty” and praised Digger as daring, ambitious, and cinematically complex, arguing that its scale was designed for theaters.

He later invoked Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 film The Devils, remembering how it had once been dismissed as excessive and overbearing. Guillermo del Toro argued that its deeper concern involved the manipulation of political narratives, then connected that idea directly to Digger. In his reading, Iñárritu’s movie uses climate catastrophe as the surface of a story concerned with how narratives are constructed and weaponized.

What do you think about Guillermo del Toro drinking around 40 Red Bulls a day while making Blade II? Let us know in the comments.