Guillermo del Toro plans to start up an international animation studio when he's finished work on The Hobbit film(s), he told RT during our exclusive Dinner and the Movies interview, which has started on the site today.

The director told us that before he got the offer to helm the Tolkien prequel, he was planning to set up two animation studios, one specialising in 3-D CGI in Los Angeles and another focusing on Anime in Japan that would do, "genre animated films, but in a different way." He told us the offices are still being built and will be used as soon as he's finished The Hobbit.

This venture isn't the only project del Toro has had to drop to focus on other priorities, the Mexican moviemaker told us he has rejected dozens of projects down the years due to scheduling issues or problems with the script.

Some of these tantalising films-that-never-were - at least with del Toro - include Se7en ("great script but a very cynical script"), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sleepy Hollow and The Chronicles of Riddick -- all of which were offered to del Toro at some stage.

We're rolling out our Dinner and the Movies interview with del Toro over the next four days, so click here to start watching.