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Guillermo del Toro on Mountains of Madness and Frankenstein!

by Alex Billington
October 26, 2007
Source: ShockTillYouDrop.com, IESB.net

Guillermo del Toro is one of those big names in Hollywood at the moment, or at least in Universal studios. While he's currently out in Budapest, Hungary filming Hellboy 2, it doesn't mean he's stilling thinking about all kinds of other projects. Two of his big news stories recently have been about his next project, At the Mountains of Madness, and rebooting classic Universal monsters. A couple of fellow journalists are currently visiting the set in Hungary and they've reported back with updates on both At the Mountains of Madness and a Frankenstein movie straight from del Toro himself!

Guillermo has been associated with an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for quite some time, with a confirmation coming from IESB earlier that it would be his next film. When asked about it further, he's still be a bit skeptical.

"I wish I knew, but Universal has acquired it, which is a great thing because it was in limbo, and I have, together with Michael, self-financed the designs and maquettes and everything, but we'll see. It's R-rated, it's expensive and it doesn't have a happy ending. I think that big-scale horror, big tentpole horror, which you used to have with 'Alien,' 'The Shining,' 'The Exorcist' before everyone thought horror needs to be this or that and pre-conceptualized, I think big tentpole like that should be back at some point in life, so I'm patiently waiting my turn."

"If I had the freedom to choose and the chance to hold it until its done, I'd do 'Mountains' right away," he continued, "but what I learned in the horrible years in between 'Cronos' and 'Mimic' and 'Mimic' and 'Devil's Backbone' is that if I did that, it takes me four years to get a movie off the ground, and it never happened in the order."

About a week ago we posted another report about Guillermo's interests to bring back the classic Universal monsters in some way, whether in the Hellboy universe or films of their own. When asked about what he would like to make, he responds with Frankenstein, with a reason that is quite interesting.

"The movie I would kill to do — and I know it's been done and I'm very conscious of that — but to do 'Frankenstein' as the Miltonian tragedy that it is. I remember reading the Frank Darabont screenplay that was illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, and saying, 'That's it! I'm screwed and never going to do it' but thanks to Kenneth Branagh, I can still do that version."

Apparently Guillermo is still interested in taking the same script that Frank Darabont wrote because it was so butchered by Kenneth Branagh in his 1994 version (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), that what's on screen isn't hardly anything like Darabont's original script. Frankenstein re-imagined by Guillermo del Toro? I'm in!

Guillermo is still one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and he seems to grow even more every year. Just look at Pan's Labyrinth and the early rumors from the set are that Hellboy 2 is even going to surpass that. He's just one of those filmmakers who I'll always follow and always keep an eye on no matter what project he's working on.

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