Good news for fans of Guillermo del Toro – and after Pan’s Labyrinth, that should be all of you.
For it seems that after the great man finishes his current pet project, the currently-shooting Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, he’ll move onto another pet project: his long-awaited adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains Of Madness.
Madness, in which an Antartic expedition stumbles upon a mountain range taller than the Himalayas that contains an indescribable and ancient evil, has been on del Toro’s to-do list (pinned up on his fridge) for ages. In fact, location scouting for Madness had already taken place in Romania before Hellboy 2 was greenlit; if that hadn’t happened, it’s highly likely that del Toro would have been shooting it right now.
A huge Lovecraft fan, del Toro had been previously unable to find a studio willing to make At The Mountains Of Madness. Perhaps they were scared by the superficial similarity to John Carpenter’s The Thing (although, of course, Lovecraft’s tale predates that by almost seventy years), but now Universal and producers Don Murphy and Susan Montford have given del Toro their backing, it looks like this will be his next movie, ahead of his Tarzan reboot and another secret project that Empire has learned of, but can’t reveal just yet.
And we wish Guillermo well – one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, he’s now developed into a truly world-class film-maker and At The Mountains Of Madness gives him ample opportunity to unleash the monsters of his dreams.
However, as Latino Review’s Kellvin Chavez– who broke the story – muses, will this be a pre-strike shoot for del Toro? Given that Hellboy 2 doesn’t finish post-production until May or June of next year, we reckon it’s unlikely. But you never know – and with the script ready, plus location scouting and some design work, del Toro could be tackling those Mountains sooner than you think.