Tag: At The Mountains of Madness

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Guillermo del Toro Pitched Horror Pic ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’ To Netflix

Years ago, Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley) was prepping to make an expensive R-rated feature adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story At The Mountains of Madness at Universal Pictures with Tom Cruise attached in a lead role. However, the studio balked at the film’s $150+ million budget, and the project eventually dissolved.

The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless–or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures…and the carved stones tens of millions of years old…and, finally, the mind-blasting terror of the City of the Old Ones.

Guillermo del Toro is out promoting his upcoming thriller, Nightmare Alley, and during a chat on Fangoria’s podcast The Kingcast (via The Playlist) revealed he’s pitched the project again to Netflix. The filmmaker added that he’d likely have to scale things back and give At The Mountains of Madness script a rewrite.

“The thing with ‘Mountains’ is the screenplay I co-wrote fifteen years ago is not the screenplay I would do now, so I need to do a rewrite. Not only to scale it down somehow but because back then I was trying to bridge the scale of it with elements that would make it go through the studio machinery.”

“I can go to a far more esoteric, weirder, smaller version of it. You know, where I can go back to some of the scenes that were left out. Some of the big set pieces I designed, for example, I have no appetite for. Like, I’ve already done this or that giant set piece. I feel like going into a weirder direction.”

The streaming giant and del Toro have a long-established working relationship with an anthology horror series currently shooting and co-directed a stop-motion animated version of Pinocchio as well. It’ll be interesting to see if Netflix will pony-up the money he’ll need to execute the project despite the talk about scaling things back.

Nightmare Alley will hit theaters on December 17.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY – An ambitious carny (Bradley Cooper) with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) who is even more dangerous than he is.

SOURCE: THE KINGCAST

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‘Crimes Of The Future’: David Cronenberg Reunites With ‘Pacific Rim’ & ‘Blade II’ Production Designer Carol Spier For New Sci-Fi Movie

Canadian director David Cronenberg (The Fly, Naked Lunch, Eastern Promises) is finally returning to the sci-fi genre as he’ll write and direct the science fiction thriller Crimes of The Future (title lifted from his 1970 film) that will be distributed in the U.S. by Neon (Parasite).

While some embrace the limitless potential of trans-humanism, others attempt to police it. Either way, “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” is spreading fast. Saul Tenser is a beloved performance artist who has embraced Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, sprouting new and unexpected organs in his body. Along with his partner Caprice, Tenser has turned the removal of these organs into a spectacle for his loyal followers to marvel at in real-time theatre. But with both the government and a strange subculture taking note, Tenser is forced to consider what would be his most shocking performance of all.

Crimes of The Future’s cast so far includes Viggo Mortensen (Lord of The Rings, Eastern Promises, The Road, Alatriste), Lea Seydoux (Spectre, No Time To Die, The Lobster), Kristen Stewart (Underwater, Panic Room, Spencer), Scott Speedman (Underworld The Strangers), Welket Bungué, Don McKellar, and Lihi Kornowski.

The Ronin can confirm the sci-fi film will see Cronenberg reunite with his longtime production designer Carol Spier (Eastern Promises, Naked Lunch, A History of Violence). She’s also worked on Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, Blade II, Mimic, and had been attached for his At The Mountains of Madness film at Universal Pictures before the project dissolved.

There is also an expectation that David Cronenberg will again work with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, Eastern Promises, Naked Lunch) on the pic as he’s been the filmmaker’s go-to director of photography since Dead Ringers.

UPDATE: Deadline reports that Canadian cinematographer Douglas Koch (Funny Boy) will be working on the film and that production has started in Greece.

Filming on Crimes of The Future is expected to begin within days as previous reports stated production is taking place in Athens, Greece over the summer.

A release date has yet to be officially announced by Neon.

Posted on in Film News

Guillermo del Toro Still Wants To Make ‘At The Mountains of Madness’ and A ‘Frankenstein’ Trilogy

While speaking with Collider to help promote the upcoming horror film Antlers, producer Guillermo del Toro revealed that he is still extremely keen on making feature films based on the H.P. Lovecraft story At The Mountains of Madness and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 

Teasing he’d like to make a trilogy about the latter.

DEL TORO: “I’ve always imagined it as a two to three-part story, because in order to encompass the book you have to change points of view and it’s a complex exercise.”

Both projects had been in various development stages in the past before Guillmero was ultimately pulled away from those films to focus on other stuff. Seemingly, when he was developing At The Mountains of Madness it got the furthest along as Tom Cruise and his Hellboy actor Ron Perlman had been attached for roles until the budgetary issues with Universal Pictures put the horror project on ice for the foreseeable future. 

The director was hellbent that Mountains needed to be R-rated and was likely another issue between himself at the studio. 

Universal had been tinkering with trying to resurrect their Universal Monsters with a Bride of Frankenstein reboot starring Oscar-winners Angelina Jolie and Javier Bardem. The studio had been reportedly courting new directors which included Sam Raimi before he took over duties from Scott Derrickson on Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness. 

Here is del Toro speaking about Bride of Frankenstein back in 2012 at the Academy screening series A Monstrous Centennial: Universal’s Legacy of Horror at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. 

Guillermo is expected to resume filming on his period thriller Nightmare Alley this fall in Toronto and had been previously attached to direct a remake of the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage for a pre-Disney owned 20th Century Studios. 

SOURCE: COLLIDER

Posted on in Film News

Guillermo del Toro Still Hopeful About Making His ‘At The Mountains of Madness’ Feature Film Adaptation

There are plenty of movies that never came together for director Guillermo del Toro such as a remake of The Fantastic Voyage and DC Comics film Justice League Dark (now being developed as a series for HBO Max by J.J. Abrams/Bad Robot). 

One of the bigger projects he was forced to walk away from was a high-budget R-rated version of H.P Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness that had Tom Cruise set to star with James Cameron producing. The film ultimately didn’t come together over budget concerns. 

While speaking with Indie Wire he spoke about still being hopeful about making the film and wears a memento ring to remind him about it. 

DEL TORO: “This is why I wear this ring since the project got canceled. This is the fake ring about a fake university, the one that appears in the book, Miskatonic University, and I’m gonna wear it until I make the movie. They may bury me with it.”

 “It’s difficult to tackle. We had James Cameron as a co-producer with me …. we had Tom Cruise [starring] and we thought we were gonna get it made and we didn’t, it didn’t happen. These are not decisions you make. Most of us filmmakers, we exist in a world that moves above our paygrade. People think that our career is a series of decisions. Our career is a series of accidents happening with your decisions on top. You don’t decide to do one movie instead of another.”

The classic story has had a large influence on the horror film genre including John Carpenter’s films such as The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness along with more modern stuff like Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus. 

SOURCE: INDIE WIRE