What is it? GDT's most cherished project of all - a high budget, R-rated, 3D period adventure movie-cum-supernatural horror based on macabre weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft's story of an Antarctic encounter with an ancient, alien evil. Back in 2006, Del Toro and Robbins put together a script right after the former's huge critical success with Pan's Labyrinth, but studio Warner Bros. balked at the high budget. By the time Del Toro left The Hobbit in 2010, Mountains Of Madness was still a strong possibility. With the world's most successful director James Cameron set to produce and the world's biggest star Tom Cruise lined up to star, the movie was set up with Universal instead. There was even hope to start shooting as soon as 2011. Why won't it happen? Having failed to get the movie made with Warners, then with Universal, and after that with Fox, Del Toro consistently met with the same objections. His determination to film on location was prohibitively expensive and no R-rated movie could possibly make that budget back. "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," Del Toro said, indicating his unwillingness to back down or compromise his vision for the film. Ultimately, the subject just doesn't seem like one studios can get behind. With the only previous Lovecraft story on the big screen being the fun, but very cheap, B-picture Re-animator, there is no sense of a blockbuster audience for weird fiction. Meanwhile, the arrival of a superficially similar "ancient astronaut" theme in Prometheus made studios timid about the overlap with Mountains Of Madness. At that point Del Toro said that the project "faces a long pause - if not demise." Nothing has happened with it since. Could any of these films ever get made? And which would you love to see? Let us know in the comments below.
