Why ‘Prometheus’ caused Guillermo del Toro to cancel ‘At the Mountains of Madness’
With three Academy Awards to his name, Guillermo del Toro realistically possesses the Hollywood capital to make whatever project he wants. While that’s undeniably true to a certain extent, the one he desires above all has never managed to come together despite the filmmaker’s repeated attempts.
In 2004, it was first announced that the director was orchestrating an ambitious adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, which was subsequently cancelled, rewritten, and sent out in an attempt to secure funding. Warner Bros declined, with Universal eventually stepping in as distributors.
He wasn’t alone, though, with James Cameron announced as a producer in 2010. A visual stylist and world-builder of del Toro’s stature partnering up with the visual mastermind behind Avatar for a blockbuster gothic fantasy shot in native 3D was a mouth-watering prospect, one that somehow got even tastier still when Tom Cruise signed on to lead the cast.
Unfortunately, concerns over the proposed $150million budget and del Toro’s desire for an R-rating stalled its progress, and test footage that was eventually circulated online is the closest anyone’s ever come to seeing what the Oscar winner had in store were he to realise his dream of bringing At the Mountains of Madness to fruition.
Despite his close working relationship with Netflix that’s spanned stop-motion feature Pinocchio, anthology series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and his upcoming spin on Frankenstein, the streaming service wouldn’t entertain his Lovecraftian pitch, either. That’s not to say it won’t happen eventually, but it’s telling that not even Netflix’s seemingly bottomless pockets saw the project as a viable proposition.
Innumerable roadblocks have befallen At the Mountains of Madness over the years, but the most baffling by far was the inadvertent impact of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Even though the latter is a prequel to the Alien franchise that has very little in common with del Toro’s passion project on any level beyond a smattering of narrative and thematic similarities, Universal nonetheless found them to be too similar.
As del Toro stated on his website, “The title itself gave me pause – knowing that Alien was heavily influenced by Lovecraft and his novella”.
Further explaining the studio’s decision, the Hellboy steward noted “scenes that would be almost identical” and how they share “the exact same big revelation at the end”. It was crushingly disappointing, but he was probably used to his dream being snatched away when it was finally within reach.
Refusing to give up, del Toro weaponised his Pinocchio success to tell IndieWire that “it would be ideal to do Mountains of Madness in stop motion”. That was hardly his intention from the beginning, but based entirely on how things have gone over the last 20 years, it might be the only way he’ll ever be able to bring it to the screen.
