In March 2011, Guillermo del Toro resigned. He sent an email to his team announcing that the project to which they had dedicated years of work was definitively cancelled. Behind them were more than three hundred pieces of conceptual art, a script they had worked on for almost a decade, James Cameron as producer and Tom Cruise as star. The novel that inspired it, a classic of literary horror, is still waiting to be adapted ninety years after its original publication.
Foundational text. HP Lovecraft He published ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ in 1936 in installments in the magazine ‘Weird Tales’. The story follows a team of researchers who travel to Antarctica and discover, within a colossal mountain system, the remains of a civilization that predated humanity. Its builders, known as “the Ancients” are organisms whose existence makes it clear that humanity does not occupy any special place in the universe, as happens in so many other stories by the author. It is a scheme that laid the foundations (after multiple experiments in the form of stories) of the cosmic horrorand its influence on cinema is obvious in movies like ‘Alien’ or ‘The Thing’.
Marked at eleven years old. Guillermo del Toro discovered the short novel as a child in Mexico and it became an obsession that stayed with him for decades. In 2002 he began working on an adaptation with Matthew Robbins, screenwriter and frequent collaborator of the director on projects such as ‘Mimic’ or ‘Pinocchio’. They completed a script but difficulties began when they tried to finance it: Warner Bros. rejected the project, and Del Toro chained films while the project returned again and again to the drawer: ‘Hellboy’, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘The Hobbit’…
Ready. In 2010 the project took a little more shape, for the first time in its eventful career. James Cameron, fresh off the success of ‘Avatar‘, came in as a producer and Tom Cruise began talks to play the protagonist. The film would be shot in native 3D and distributed by Universal. In 2011, Del Toro was hurriedly working on a new version of the script to shoot that summer, but before that, in March, Universal archived the project. The reason was, mainly, the exorbitant budget of 150 million for a horror film for adults in which Del Toro did not want to reduce the violence.
Curiously, Universal next financed ‘Pacific Rim’, which cost $190 million but, yes, had much less exaggerated violence.
The coup de grace: ‘Prometheus’. In April 2012, del Toro published in the forums of their official website a text that related ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ with ‘Prometheus’, the feature film by Ridley Scott. According to the director, they had an identical premise, very similar scenes and an absolutely parallel final revelation. That is: explorers of unknown places discover an ancient alien civilization and realize something devastating about their own origins.
More attempts. Despite the disappointment of ‘Prometheus’, Del Toro did not completely abandon the project. When he joined Legendary Pictures, he considered the possibility of making a PG-13 film, that is, with less violence. When he later signed a contract with Netflix in 2020, he submitted the project to the platform, but it was not accepted. In November 2022posted on Instagram 25 seconds of CGI footage prepared by Industrial Light & Magic for the 2011 version. The clip showed the Ancients in spectacular fidelity to Lovecraft’s description. Later would recognize than a feature film stop motion could be a viable format for the project.
At the end of 2025, del Toro released ‘Frankenstein’ on Netflix, another project he had been wanting to do for decades. The film was a success in the awards season (nominated for nine Oscars and won three), with audiences and critics. Perhaps it is also, without us knowing it, an open door for one of the most deservedly legendary projects of modern fantasy cinema.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings