And lo, it did come to pass that in the year 2010, Guillermo del Toro did finally manage to get a cinematic version of HP Lovecraft’s **At the Mountains of Madness ready to shoot. Sorry for the cod-portentous language there, but it is something of a remarkable development. And that’s not the only surprise today: he’s shooting in 3D and a certain Mr James Cameron will be on board as producer.
Yes, after months of speculation, it would seem that GDT is ready to announce he’s committed to a new project and, after talking about Haunted Mansion at Comic-Con (he’s only writing and producing that one) and hinting that his next movie will be scary, Deadline has finally locked in word that he’ll move Mountains for Universal.
It’s both a shock and yet not truly surprising, as the Lovecraft tale (which sees a 1930s scientific expedition discover something ancient and terrible at the South Pole that suggests mankind’s origins might lie with the powerful, alien elder gods) has been a passion project for the filmmaker for more than 13 years.
The movie has been at more than one studio over that time, with the current incarnation starting off at DreamWorks in 2004. But that stalled out and Universal took it over when del Toro made an overall deal there in 2007. It looked like the Madness might actually begin there, before** The Hobbit** came a-calling and GDT headed to New Zealand.
But with Middle Earth now off the table, it’s back into the Madness for the man who has long dreamed, along with writing collaborator Matthew Robbins, of bringing the monstrous elders to life.
Cameron, meanwhile, is breaking is own golden rule about producing other people’s films to help del Toro out, given that this will be his first stab at 3D and the man who made Avatar can ensure that it’ll live up to that standard of 3D. We know we complain about dodgy uses of the technology, but with these two working together, Mountains could be a true blend of massive scale project, well-crafted adventure and decent 3D.
And don’t go thinking that compromise got the film going at last. According to the director, he’s not budging on certain key elements. “With Mountains of Madness, there are two things that I've been battling all these years: period and R-rated, and a very, very tough ending, so the studio is very scared of period obviously, very scared of the budget and an R-rating,” he told Coming Soon. “And the first conversation I always have is, 'Does it have to be R?' and I go, 'Yes.' 'Does it have to be period? Does it have to be Antarctica?' 'Yes.’”
The site reports a Universal source as saying it’s not 100% locked down yet, but with GDT and Cameron both ready to go, we feel we can finally look forward to this thing arriving. Pre-production is apparently gearing up soon for a likely shoot next summer. Please, tentacled horrors, let it be so!