Once upon a time, there was a time when Guillermo del Toro and mega-star Tom Cruise almost worked together on a massive R-rated feature film version of “At The Mountains of Madness.” The film obviously didn’t come together because of creative differences between del Toro and Universal, along with the insane demands from the studio to get the budget to where it needed to be. Mainly, attempting a PG-13 version which likely would have deflated the vision del Toro for his take on the H.P. Lovecraft sci-fi horror tale.

Well, while speaking with Collider, the filmmaker revealed another sci-fi project they almost worked on together and it was his big mainstream attempt at a robots versus kaiju film, “Pacific Rim.” Instead of Cruise being wanted for the main role in the film they had actually wanted him to play Idris Elba’s mentor and commanding officer character, Marshal Stacker Pentecost. Of course, when they decided to pursue Elba after Cruise wasn’t an option they ended up rewriting the part.

“Oh yeah. The two models for ‘Pacific Rim,’ the two models for the screenplay, are ‘Hoosiers’ with Gene Hackman and Top Gun. So, the part that Idris Elba plays, Tom Cruise was gonna do it, and I even had a karaoke. The deal couldn’t be made. He wanted to do it. We were developing stuff, and he couldn’t do it. I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s go with Idris Elba then. He’s a god.’ Obviously, I had to rewrite it for that, but I thought it was gonna be an interesting analog to do that. It would have been a lot of fun.”

Of course, Tom Cruise did attempt to dabble in more action-centric sci-fi genre projects such as “Edge of Tomorrow” and “Oblivion” which came out the same year as “Pacific Rim” before mostly sticking to his “Mission: Impossible” films alongside the recent “Top Gun” sequel “Maverick.” Stacker would end up dying in the film only for a son we had no idea even existed, played by John Boyega, who became the main lead in the studio’s follow-up installment “Pacific Rim: Uprising.” It’s still pretty wacky that Universal and Warner Bros. wasted a potential team-up between Cruise and del Toro, another fuck-up of epic proportions by agencies/studio executives.

Hopefully, the two will eventually work together at some point.

PACIFIC RIM: Long ago, legions of monstrous creatures called Kaiju arose from the sea, bringing with them all-consuming war. To fight the Kaiju, mankind developed giant robots called Jaegers, designed to be piloted by two humans locked together in a neural bridge. However, even the Jaegers are not enough to defeat the Kaiju, and humanity is on the verge of defeat. Mankind’s last hope now lies with a washed-up ex-pilot (Charlie Hunnam), an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi), and an old, obsolete Jaeger.

SOURCE: COLLIDER