UPDATE: At The Mountains Of Madness still trying to get going, Guillermo Del Toro might do Pacific Rim

March 8th 2011, 12:00am

UPDATE – Criterion Cast got in touch with Guillermo del Toro who confirmed what we all feared. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is “dead.” While Guillermo didn’t speak to it directly, I’ve heard that Universal officially passed on the film this past Friday. Will it ever happen again? Possible but given del Toro’s many fingers in many different pies, I would guess he’ll just move on, shoot PACIFIC RIM and leave MADNESS behind.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is having a hard time. The damn thing has been trying to get greenlit at Universal for some time now. Today io9 reported that the film would be filming in June with Tom Cruise. This info came in an email from producer Don Murphy.

This is not the case. HitFix thought that they would send Guillermo Del Toro and Murphy a congrats email. Murphy replied back with this official statement to HitFix:

“We are all trying to get Mountains up and running with Tom and Jim and everybody but no start date has been set AT ALL.”

So I guess he spoke to soon with i09.

Now Deadline is coming in with the info that a competing project for Del Toro is on the table. It seems that Legendary Pictures is moving fast on a film that the director really wants to be a part of called PACIFIC RIM. The project is right up his alle– it has big monsters and the creation of a whole new world.

But del Toro really, really wants MOUNTAINS. It’s his dream project, but it might have to take a backseat if PACIFIC gets its shit together faster. Universal is still leery of the $150 million budget and R-rating for MOUNTAINS. It’s been said that James Cameron, who is helping with the 3D aspect and also producing on MOUNTAINS could get Fox to get the project going.

What will he choose? Deadline says that del Toro would do PACIFIC then return to do MOUNTAINS once they get everything sorted out. The site notes that, “hope is that the studio will be in a better place or they will figure out a way to make it PG-13 or for less money than it’s at right now.”