Poor Guillermo Del Toro. Hardly a week goes by without me having to write an article about how badly life has treated him. I swear he is cursed. The Devil is rubbing it in his face again tonight as
Deadline reports that Universal, of all people, are closing in on financing
Joseph Kosinski's (Tron Legacy) ambitious but importantly PG-13 rated sci-fi venture
Oblivion which has
Tom Cruise in early talks after
Disney dropped the project earlier in the year. The deal that is trying to be secured comes
just a month after Universal themselves said no to a $150 million sci-fi project, an adaptation of
At The Mountains of Madness, which was to be directed by Guillermo Del Toro with Tom Cruise also attached. Now the Cruise led Oblivion looks to have taken the place of Del Toro's former tentpole. How cruel. Universal have made it clear to Kosinski that he won't get anything more than $100 million to make his movie and HE MUST obtain a PG-13 rating, the same stipulation that caused problems between Disney and Kosinski and led to the project being dropped at The Mouse. Originally scripted by
William Monahan but more recently updated by
Karl Gajdusek (story editor on Dead Like Me), Oblivion is an adaptation of Kosinski's summer released graphic novel and carries the following synopsis;
set in a future where the Earths surface has been irradiated beyond recognition and the remnants of humanity live above the clouds, safe from the brutal alien Scavengers that stalk the ruins. But when surface drone repairman Jak discovers a mysterious woman in a crash-landed pod, it sets off an unstoppable chain of events that will force him to question everything he knows.
If the deal comes together the movie will probably film in October when Cruise is finished with
Rock of Ages. Universal would wholly finance and distribute. Sounds ambitious and if Cruise is interested we imagine there's huge potential in this one but man, any sci-fi project setup like this at Universal feels second-rate to At The Mountains of Madness.