10 Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made
4. At The Mountains Of Madness
Guillermo del Toro spent the better part of a decade working to make a film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's science-fiction novella, At the Mountains of Madness, but he failed. The novella was written back in 1931 and followed a disastrous expedition to the Antarctic continent in September 1930.
The narrator, Dr. William Dyer of Miskatoni University, was the leader of the expedition, and through a series of events, he and his crew work to deter any future explorers from returning to the continent. Del Toro worked with screenwriter Matthew Robbins to put together a screenplay in 2006 but ran into financing issues.
Warner Bros. wasn't excited about financing the project, and Del Toro wrote, "The studio is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it's impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe." Still, the movie began development in 2010 with James Cameron set to produce.
Tom Cruise was attached to star, and in 2011, it was set to begin production. Unfortunately, Universal Studios refused to give the green light when the director wouldn't back down on ensuring an R rating over the studio's preferred PG-13.
As a result, the adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness came to a crashing halt in 2013.