Guillermo del Toro Still Hopes to Make H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness

H.P. Lovecraft is considered one of the most seminal authors in all of horror and sci-fi literature, with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro considered a visionary of cinema, and while del Toro’s previous efforts to adapt Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness never moved forward, he recently confirmed that he’s still interested in making that project become a reality. The project first started to take shape back in the mid-2000s but didn’t seem to make substantial steps forward until the early 2010s, but even with impressive names attached, del Toro’s plans never worked out and he continues to hope the stars will align for the adventure.

“This is why I wear this ring, since the project got cancelled,” del Toro shared during a video interview with IndieWire about the status of the project. “This is the fake ring about a fake university, the one that appears in the book, Miskatonic University, and I’m gonna wear it until I make the movie. They may bury me with it.”

He continued, “It’s difficult to tackle. We had James Cameron as a co-producer with me …. we had Tom Cruise [to star] and we thought we were gonna get it made and we didn’t, it didn’t happen. These are not decisions you make. Most of us filmmakers, we exist in a world that moves above our paygrade. People think that our career is a series of decisions. Our career is a series of accidents happening with your decisions on top. You don’t decide to do one movie instead of another.”

Throughout his career, del Toro gave audiences a number of compelling genre films, with one of his biggest critical successes being Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, earning three Academy Awards. Despite that film’s accomplishments, del Toro’s insistence of sticking to the grim subject matter and R-rated tone of Lovecraft’s source material caused complications at a number of studios and halted its development.

What ultimately was the nail in the coffin of the project, according to del Toro, was the release of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus.

In 2012, del Toro noted that, in addition to the projects being tonally similar and Alien having been inspired by the works of Lovecraft, the two narratives featured the “same premise. Scenes that would be almost identical. Both movies seem to share identical set pieces and the exact same BIG REVELATION (twist) at the end. I won’t spoil it.”

Stay tuned for details on the possible future of At the Mountains of Madness.

Are you hoping we can see the project get made? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!