Can you say “dream team?”
Not that long after (sadly) departing the two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, celebrated director Guillermo del Toro has reportedly chosen his next directorial project: an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft tale, At the Mountains of Madness.
If that news isn’t exciting enough, none other than mega-director and producer James Cameron is reportedly coming onboard to produce the adaptation. Dream team, indeed.
Del Toro has had this project in the works for a while now, as far back as 2004 when it was set up at Dreamworks by del Toro and producers Susan Montford and Don Murphy. Del Toro co-wrote the script with Matthew Robbins (Mimic) back then, but is now going to do some “retooling.”
Mountains of Madness gained steam back in 2007 when del Toro made a huge overall deal with Universal, round about the same time the studio gave the go-ahead on Hellboy II. The project lay dormant until del Toro surprisingly decided to take on the mammoth responsibility of adapting The Hobbit.
In case you’re not aware, At the Mountains of Madness is a 1931 story by the author H.P. Lovecraft. Here’s the overall plot as Deadline reports it:
A gruesome discovery made during a scientific expedition to the South Pole in the 1930s hints at the true origin of mankind having come from elder gods from another planet. Bad things happen when those life forms are awakened.
The book has been adapted many times in the past, including into a radio drama and even a musical. However, this will be the first big-screen adaptation.
You shouldn’t be surprised to hear that Mountains of Madness will be in 3D but you can breath a sigh of relief as it’s being shot in that format, as opposed to be converted after the fact. A huge bit of good news is that Cameron will be producing and can really put his 3D expertise that he perfected with Avatar to good use.
Cameron has a remake of Fantastic Voyage on the horizon, but apart from that he supposedly wasn’t going to be attaching himself to many other new projects (even in a producing capacity). However, it appears he’s made an exception here, presumably (at least partly) because he gets to work with del Toro, one of the finest filmmakers working today.
As you probably already know, del Toro has a thousand and one other projects on his plate. He wasn’t able to get to any of them before, as he was tied up with The Hobbit. However, now that’s he’s free of that, he has the opportunity to tackle all those other projects. On his list are Frankenstein, Slaughterhouse-Five, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and many more.
Mountains of Madness is going to be a huge project for del Toro, certainly the biggest he’s ever attempted (outside of The Hobbit). But he has proven himself a fantastic director on numerous occasions, so I have no doubt he’s up to the task.
At the Mountains of Madness will reportedly start pre-production in the next few weeks and will start shooting next summer.
