Guillermo del Toro Says Never Say Die to ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ But There’s Plenty He’d Change About It

At the Mountains of Madness, the acclaimed fantasy auteur Guillermo del Toro‘s long-awaited adaptation of the eponymous novella by H.P. Lovecraft – a cinematic marriage made in heaven, you’d think – has, alas, sat in film purgatory since 2006, when a script was first penned.

Warner Bros. turned down the project numerous times in the late-2000s on the basis of the film’s massive projected budget and prospective R-rating. It was later picked up by Universal, with Tom Cruise set to star, but again the same hurdles emerged: del Toro refused to censor his vision for the film, and at an estimated $150 million, the required budget was deemed way too high.

Now, in conversation with The Kingcast podcast, del Toro has revealed a handful of new details about the project. First of all, he plans to rewrite the original script:

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“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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The “studio machinery” in question being, of course, Hollywood – and the demand, as The Kingcast alludes, for studio tentpoles to fulfill a specific, cookie-cutter blueprint. On that, del Toro adds:

“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.”

And of course, it wouldn’t be a del Toro picture without something sublime, fantastical, and deeply weird:

“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. I certainly get a phone call every six months from Don Murphy going ‘Are we doing this or what? Are you doing this next or what?’ and I say ‘I have to take the time to rewrite it.'”

As for Cruise, tapped up to star in the film all those years ago? “I think the age has changed now. Tom is fifteen years older,” the director says, saying he’d prefer to go for mostly unknown actors. With the huge Oscars success of The Shape of Water and an upcoming ensemble flick, Nightmare Alley, which just about every prognosticator in the industry expects to hit big come awards season, you’d think del Toro has accrued enough credit by now to cash in on a big passion project. Let’s hope so.