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Guillermo del Toro Talks More At the Mountains of Madness

by Alex Billington
January 30, 2008
Source: MTV

Back in October last year we ran the news that Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro would be making H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness next after finishing Hellboy II. The film has been a pet project for del Toro for years, and reports were finally saying that it would get its time and get made. However, with The Hobbit in consideration (del Toro is in final talks to direct the two Hobbit films), we're not really sure if he'll have enough time to make Mountains of Madness before he starts work on The Hobbit. At least he can talk about his script and thoughts At the Mountains of Madness, though!

MTV recently caught up with del Toro and spoke with him about the H.P. Lovecraft story that involves the ancient monster Cthulhu.

"I remember when I was a kid out of the studios came the big event horror movies, 'The Exorcist,' 'Alien,' 'Jaws,' 'The Shining,'" del Toro recalled. "It is my hope that this movie will be a tentpole movie [of that sort]. It has the scope of a Shackleton epic exploration movie but it's full of tentacled things."

I know I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that everyone goes well with this, including the financial support of a major studio. Del Toro seems pretty set at Universal at the moment, which is where Hellboy II is and where he's been talking about re-envisioning Universal's classic monster movies. Thankfully del Toro already has a script done for At the Mountains of Madness, which means maybe, just maybe, it could get done in between Hellboy II and Hobbit.

"I'm happy with [my script]. I know some people would like a happier ending but I'm happy with the ending there is."

"It's not hard to be faithful to Lovecraft because what is great about the novel is that it's a compilation of really dry scientific annotations that happen to be annotating something really scary. There is no character or dramatic thread," he insisted. "You take those document and you then create a story. If you were [just rigidly faithful] you would be doing a National Geographic special on a crew that disappeared in an exploration mission."

The film is adapted from the H.P. Lovecraft novel about explorers who journey to Antarctica where they uncover an ancient race of tentacled beasts in the ruins of a lost civilization. The novella was first written in 1931 and the story is considered to represent the decisive "demythology" of Cthulhu. You can pick up a copy of it from Amazon.com if you're interested in reading it well before Guillermo makes his version. I wish Guillermo the best of luck with At the Mountains of Madness and I really hope it gets made before he dives into The Hobbit.

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CSpuppydog

Yeah I am pretty much stoked.. I loved this story and Del Toro is pretty much my favorite director(Pan's Labyrinth being my favorite movie of all time). So yeah im super excited. Im not really excited for Hobbit as much so I hope he has time to make this one...
http://movieguyreviews4u.blogspot.com Ryan

I'm pretty excited. Del Toro is a respectable director so it should be good.
Alexander

Del Toro is a fantastic director, i loved Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy and H.P. Lovecraft writes some pretty intense stuff so I'm pretty stoked, can't wait to hear more about this flick
Gryndyl

At the Mountains of Madness can be read online here: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm This movie seems to have the best chance of finally bringing a respectable Lovecraft adaptation to a large audience. Can't wait!
http://www.drduvel.net Dr.Duvel

Cool. The Bull does have vision. He's also not afraid to take on some pretty challenging work. Good luck to him. I'm always worried though when a vaguely described "terrifying" construct is made flesh as it must for a movie adaptation. Maybe I have a really vivid imagination, but Movie Monsters always let me down. Balrog - not scary, just big.
Reese Copeland

I would love to see this story made into a movie. With the characters that Del Toro seems to have developed already with both of his Hellboy movies, it would seem that Del Toro seems to have been heavily influenced by HP Lovecraft already. So, this may be the one guy that gets how to actually put together a movie that would actually be worthy of a Lovecraftian story.
Russell Willoughby

I am excited that this Lovecraft story is finally being made into a movie. I have read it many, many times. However, I don't remember an references to Cthulhu in this book? I was wondering why this article says that the story "involves the ancient monster Cthulhu?" I hope this does NOT mean that we will end up with another "so-called" Lovecraft-based movie that only makes use of some of his more well-known phrases and character names without trying to tell Lovecraft's own story. I cannot understand why so many film makers insist on making "Lovecraft" movies without even attempting to use one of his whole stories. Instead, they just borrow elements from this or that story, toss it all together in a hodg podge that has nothing to do with his original tales. I sincerely hope that del Torro will actually read the Lovecraft story before making the movie. I would hate to see another rewriting fiasco like the Lord of the Rings movies.
Charles Gaines

Just pointing out that you don't need to buy this on amazon. It's a public domain novel and is therefore free on gutenberg.org or manybooks.net.