Del Toro Still Determined To Make “Madness”

Every filmmaker has one great passion project, and famously for filmmaker Guillermo del Toro it’s his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains Of Madness”.

For over a decade he’s struggled to get the Antarctica-set project going and at one point came incredibly close with Tom Cruise to star and James Cameron to produce. The trouble is, that version cost $150 million and would have carried an R-rating – too much of a risk for Universal Pictures who balked and scrapped it.

In a recent interview with Indiewire though, Del Toro revealed that his commitment to making the movie is iron clad and will remain as long as he’s alive:

“This is why I wear this ring, since the project got cancelled. 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.”

Though considered one of the greatest horror authors, Lovecraft’s books have defied adaption over the years with arguably the most successful translation being John Carpenter’s 1995 film “In the Mouth of Madness” which is effectively a homage to much of the author’s work and his Cthulhu Mythos.

‘Mountains’ is one of his signature works – an atmospheric 1931 story which follows explorers in Antarctica who uncover the remains of highly evolved creatures neither plant or animal. Investigating a gigantic mountain range, they come upon an abandoned ancient city. Their explorations underground causes something to stir from its slumber. Del Toro spoke about the challenge of getting it translated:

“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.”

Del Toro hopes to restart production on his currently half-shot noir tale “Nightmare Alley” this Fall and is still working on a new stop motion animated take on “Pinocchio” for Netflix.

The post Del Toro Still Determined To Make “Madness” appeared first on Dark Horizons.

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