Sure, he’s helming a huge movie that’s looking to be a big summer blockbuster next year, but the man’s mind is elsewhere. Sci-Fi Wire recently talked to del Toro and he revealed that AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is his top priority after HELLBOY. Groovy. del Toro has been rumored to be interested in directing THE HOBBIT and HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, along with producing various other projects like HATER, so to hear that his number one choice is MOUNTAINS is pretty interesting.
The synopsis for AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS reads something like: An Antarctic expedition make some uncanny discoveries and encounter an untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization. The people from the lost civilization were killed by their shapeshifting servants, called shoggoths; the shoggoths are still alive. Sounds awesome to me. And in case you didn’t know, MOUNTAINS is a story written by H.P. Lovecraft in the 1930s. To see del Toro adapt a story like that would be something to see! del Toro said:
“If Mountains of Madness could happen, I would do it in a second. But there is no one knocking at my door with the budget, saying, ‘Let’s make it.'”
Why aren’t studios knocking down this man’s door? I’m sure they will soon. del Toro also went on to talk about the actual novel and why he wants to do it:
“What I love about [it] is that the cosmic-horror aspect of Lovecraft–the fact that we are alone in a universe that does not care about humankind, mankind–has not been explored. The insignificance of man in the scope of the cosmos, which is at the heart of the horror, which is a Pascalian horror, the horror of the empty spaces, has not been explored in film. Lovecraft does it in every story he does in the Cthulhu cycle, but in this particular instance it’s stronger than any of the other [stories].”
So here’s hoping del Toro scores MOUNTAINS after HELLBOY.