Guillermo del Toro is a filmmaker juggling many passion projects, but none quite as ambitious or enduring as his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. All hope faded after the project fell into purgatory since its 2006 script origins. Now, del Toro renews that hope with new details that the project may yet come to pass, albeit in a very different form.
In a recent conversation with The Kingcast podcast, hosts Eric Vespe and Scott Wampler asked del Toro about his dream project now that he’s established a working relationship with Netflix on the upcoming series “Cabinet of Curiosities.”
His reply: “Take a wild guess which were the first projects I presented, you know? I went through the cupboards and found [The Count of] Monte Cristo, [At the] Mountains of Madness. Those were a couple of the ones I presented first. The thing with Mountains is, the screenplay I co-wrote 15 years ago is not the screenplay I would do now, so I need to do a rewrite. Not only to scale it down somehow but because back then, I was trying to bridge the scale of it with elements that made it somewhat be able to go through the studio machinery. You know?”
Del Toro described a weirder, smaller, more esoteric version than the larger-scaled, big-budget project he planned over fifteen years ago. He just needs to find the time to rewrite the script.
He also shared with the podcast when fans might expect this updated version, “Right now I’m developing two screenplays, one of which I think will be right away next. I’m busy finishing Pinocchio, producing Cabinet of Curiosities in Toronto, and I’m settling down from the post-pandemic sort of domino [effect]. Everything that I had spaced out for three years, all of a sudden, the deliveries came all at the same time. But it is my hope.”
The would-be H.P. Lovecraft adaptation tells of a disastrous Antarctic expedition who encounters unspeakable horrors after discovering ancient ruins.
With Nightmare Alley releasing just in time for Awards Season on December 17, the Oscar-winning director surely has enough accolades and clout to finally see his dream project come to fruition, right?