Guillermo del Toro Still Might Adapt Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, Only This Time He’ll Make it Weirder

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak, Pan’s Labyrinth) has more than a few movies that are favorites for many a genre fan.

One movie that got away, however, was an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, which he had in the works at Universal Pictures about a decade ago. The project had a big price tag and big names attached to it, including Tom Cruise and James Cameron.

Universal, however, decided there would be no Cthulhu for you and axed the project. Since then, hopes of seeing a del Toro adaptation of the story remained a mere dream. Recently, however, the director hinted there was still hope the project may happen.

In an interview on THE KINGCAST podcast, del Toro shared that he might revisit At the Mountains of Madness, although the version he made now would be different than the one he was involved with years ago. Here’s what he said:

The thing with Mountains is, the screenplay I co-wrote fifteen 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 would make it go through the studio machinery…

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I don’t think I need to reconcile that anymore. I can go to a far more esoteric, weirder, smaller version of it. You know, where I can go back to some of the scenes that were left out. Some of the big set pieces I designed, for example, I have no appetite for. Like, I’ve already done this or that giant set piece. I feel like going into a weirder direction.

I know a few things will stay. I know the ending we have is one the most intriguing, weird, unsettling endings, for me. There’s about four horror set pieces that I love in the original script. So, you know, it would be my hope.

It would certainly be our hope too! Any potential adaption, however, would have to come after he wraps up his current projects. “Right now I’m developing two screenplays, one of which I think will be right away next,” del Toro said. “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.”