Home Entertainment Guillermo Del Toro heading to THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS after all. Tom Cruise may still go with him

Guillermo Del Toro heading to THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS after all. Tom Cruise may still go with him

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Once upon a time, Guillermo Del Toro (yes, it’s another story about him!) was working his rather substantial butt off to bring his version of HP Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness to the big screen. It was a true blood, sweat and tears affair and even after Universal pulled the plug, he was still trying to find a way to get it made.

Then along came Ridley Scott with all his money and Hollywood power and he cranked out Prometheus quick as you like. And since Del Toro saw quite a few similarities between the two films, he felt he had no choice but to rather scrap any plans of revitalizing the project. But it looks like the director is now turning back from a Mexi-can’t into a Mexi-can, as he’s reconsidered his decision.

If you’re wondering what prompted this change of heart, it’s simple really: Back when Del Toro first announced his decision to rather cancel everything instead of looking like he copied Prometheus, he hadn’t actually seen Scott’s divisive sci-fi film yet, as he explained to The Playlist.

“I saw it finally and.. yes, there are things in common, but, you know, screw it. Lovecraft was there first.”

Now when Mountains fell flat, Del Toro instead went on to make Pacific Rim (much to my inner otaku’s delight) and he hinted at the time that based on the success of that film, he might be able to convince Legendary Pictures to also finance Mountains if he should ever feel the urge to return to it. Well, he’s felt the urge, but he won’t just be taking it to Legendary but will be going big and shopping the project around to just about anybody willing to listen.

“I’m going to try it one more time. Once more into the dark abyss. We’re gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year and see if any [studio’s] interested…Yeah, Tom [Cruise] is still attached. I think it would be so fantastic to make it with him. He’s been such a great ally of the project.”

Although I have personally never read the Lovecraftian tale (despite the fact that it’s been on my Kindle for over a year now already – bad Kervyn!) I am familiar enough with the story’s broader strokes to know that besides for the whole “ancient alien astronauts” angle, there’s a lot to differentiate this story from Prometheus, and Del Toro and Cruise could make for one compelling team to tell it. Del Toro is an amazing visual storyteller and it would be great to see his visions of the Elder Things and their Shoggoths.

Last Updated: January 8, 2013

2 Comments

  1. Lourens Corleone

    January 8, 2013 at 13:59

    It is a much more ambitious tale that Prometheus, in scale and concept. VERY excited.

    Reply

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