Anyone that has followed Guillermo Del Toro's ever-growing filmography should know that the man has a ton of projects on his plate, many of which get on his back-burner for years or just end up with him only in the producer or co-writer chair.
However, there is still one film that, despite Del Toro's efforts, he couldn't make: At the Mountain of Madness, an adaptation of the book by the same name by H.P. Lovecraft. The primary reason that the movie never came to be was because Del Toro was too invested in the film's R-rating to make the movie at a budget that Universal Studios would feel comfortable spending. So the film feel apart, although Del Toro now says that he was able to retool the movie enough to earn it a PG-13 rating.
When speaking to Wall Street Journal, Del Toro revealed that the movie seems to be earning a new life over at Legendary Pictures, noting that “I said to them, that’s the movie that I would really love to do one day, and it’s still expensive. I think that now, with the way I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic.”
He went on to continue commenting that, "There’s basically one or two scenes in the book that people don’t remember that are pretty graphic. Namely, for example, the human autopsy that the aliens do, which is a very shocking moment. But I think I can find ways of doing it. We’ll see. It’s certainly a possibility in the future."
He went to say that he was "very close to doing it at one point" with Legendary, and that "I know that they love the screenplay."
"Hopefully it’ll happen. It’s certainly one of the movies I would love to do," were his final words on the film, at the moment.
If this does, indeed, become a film that Del Toro is going to make, it probably won't be for at least a couple of years. At the moment, he is in the midst of post-production on his next movie, Crimson Peak, which will be hitting theaters on October 16, 2015. He also is set to work on Pacific Rim 2, which is set to be released on April 7, 2017 by Legendary Pictures.
If that wasn't enough, he also directed a couple episodes of the new show The Strain, based on his own book series, which is set to premiere in just nine days on July 13, 2014.
Image courtesy of Peter West/ACE Pictures