Del Toro Says 'Prometheus' Has Killed 'At The Mountains Of Madness'

[Sammich]

DAMNIT!

I have been a reader of H.P. Lovecraft books for many many many years and was very excited to hear that Del Toro was seriously going forward to make At The Mountains Of Madness into a movie. After being relegated to the realm of indie films, it would have been the first time that a HPL story would have been given a big budget and an accomplished director being given the helm.

I have been waiting in anticipation for about 10 years after the first rumors of ATMOM was in the works but now this just makes me angry.

Guillermo Del Toro Says 'Prometheus' Has Killed 'At The Mountains Of Madness' Because They Both Have The Same Final Twist (http://www.manmademag.com/out/94f52/)

Del Toro also adds that not only do 'Madness' and "Prometheus" share a Lovecraft connection, he believes that even down to specific sequences, and the big reveal, the two films would be too similar. "Same premise. Scenes that would be almost identical. Both movies seem to share identical set pieces and the exact same BIG REVELATION (twist) at the end. I won't spoil it," he added. Without going too far into it, both stories concern teams of scientists/adventurers coming face to face with ancient/lost civilizations.

[bassman]

I thought about posting this in the Prometheus thread a week or two ago. If anything, Del Toro needs to stop his whinning because Scott's film will most likely be a financial success and in turn, give the studio the confidence to finance Del Toro's film. Sure, it's possible that certain plot points could be similar, but that doesn't mean his film can no longer be made.

I like a good portion of Del Toro's films, but with this he comes off sounding like a small child that's upset he lost a game of tag.

Still looking forward to Pacific Rim....

[Sammich]

"Whinning" and "acting like a small child"? I guess some people see what they want to see regardless of what was really reported.

[bassman]

"Whinning" and "acting like a small child"? I guess some people see what they want to see regardless of what was really reported.

What was really reported, then? All I see is Del Toro complaining because someone beat him to the punch. Like I said before, it really shouldn't even be a problem. There are plenty of films that mirror each other released within the same time period. Ridley Scott's film has absolutely no bearing on Del Toro's other than maybe providing proof that these types of R-rated science fiction films are a wise investment for the studios.

I enjoy Del Toro's films, look forward to Pacific Rim, and hope to one day see ATMOM, but for him to publicly complain about another film supposedly ruining his chances is just silly.

[Danny]

hmm, tough choice between them but honestly? i would've gone with del toro personally, but i can see why they didnt. both have the cult followings to bring in the bucks but i think del toro needs another big 'el labyrinto del pan' under his belt before he can pull the same weight.

[shootemindehead]

I would have thought, that if anything, the success (or projected success) of 'Prometheus' would have been beneficial to Del Toro's 'At the Mountains of Madness'.

I think what's REALLY standing in the way of it, is the industry's reluctance to touch H.P. Lovecraft's stories on a serious level.

"...the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation was kiboshed by Universal last spring, likely due to the high pricetag (said to be in the neighborhood of $150 million) and Del Toro's insistence on an R rating, something that would have made the financial profitability of the movie a tough sell, even with Tom Cruise attached to star."

Hmmm...maybe it's better that the film isn't getting made after all.

[AcesandEights]

Hmmm...maybe it's better that the film isn't getting made after all.

Shootem, Shootem, you don't even...you're glib :)

[shootemindehead]

Perhaps Aces...

But really? 'At the Mountains of Madness' being a cruser vehicle?

Funk that.

[MoonSylver]

even with Tom Cruise attached to star."

Hmmm...maybe it's better that the film isn't getting made after all.

Amen. Elron be praised. :lol:


Shootem, Shootem, you don't even...you're glib :)

http://thumbs.newschoolers.com/index.php?src=http://static.fjcdn.com/gifs/tom+cruise+crazy+laugh_f2fcb0_839731.gif&size=400x1000

http://roflrazzi.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/funny-celebrity-pictures-so-your-saying-you-have-many-aliens-livi.jpg

[Mike70]

"...the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation was kiboshed by Universal last spring, likely due to the high pricetag (said to be in the neighborhood of $150 million) and Del Toro's insistence on an R rating, something that would have made the financial profitability of the movie a tough sell, even with Tom Cruise attached to star."

Hmmm...maybe it's better that the film isn't getting made after all.

like many of you, i have had a life long love for Lovecraft's work. i have serious doubts that anyone could bring that mythos to life in a way even close to the darkness and doom that it demands. even stuart gordon's films, as good as many of them are, don't really reflect Lovecraft's world very well.

i think the problem revolves around the near absence of dialogue in Lovecraft's work. a great many of his stories have almost no verbal interaction between the characters, some of them have none at all. it is his rich sense of description and the way he created what i would call landscapes of doom and gloom that make Lovecraft great.

[krakenslayer]

like many of you, i have had a life long love for Lovecraft's work. i have serious doubts that anyone could bring that mythos to life in a way even close to the darkness and doom that it demands. even stuart gordon's films, as good as many of them are, don't really reflect Lovecraft's world very well.

i think the problem revolves around the near absence of dialogue in Lovecraft's work. a great many of his stories have almost no verbal interaction between the characters, some of them have none at all. it is his rich sense of description and the way he created what i would call landscapes of doom and gloom that make Lovecraft great.

This is a very good observation. There are also a few other obstacles I can think of that would make Lovecraft's work inherently difficult to adapt onto film:

1) Traditionally, much of the "action" is not participated in directly by the narrator. With a few notable exceptions, the narrator himself is usually not present for all the major events of the plot, but instead pieces together the plot through reading books and newspaper articles. In Call of Cthulhu, for example, the narrator finds out about strange dreams shared by people all over the world by reading his old uncle's notes, finds out about a raid on a Cthulhu cult through corresponding with a police inspector, and finds out about an encounter with Cthulhu himself in the Pacific by going through news reports and interviewing a dead guy's widow. No single character is physically present through more than one of the pivotal events. This COULD be done on film, using portmanteau style flashbacks in place of descriptions, but would be a very non-traditional narrative by Hollywood standards. I suspect Hollywood would try to take the easy route, and artificially inject the central character into all the set-pieces, turning him into Indiana Jones and depriving the film of the "armchair detective" element that was the main feature of most his books.

2) Connected to the above: so many of the most terrifying reveals in Lovecraft's stories are not big CGI moments, but a character simply piecing together information from different written sources after long study, and coming to a terrible conclusion. The horror is cerebral, just an idea. This is chilling on the page but would be difficult to do right on-screen. Once again, the easy option beckons: monsters, lots of monsters.

3) The great thing about the horrors of Lovecraft's imagination, what makes them unique for his time period, is that they were not simple, superstitious, supernatural creatures with magic powers, but instead borderline science-fictional cosmic entities, beings from elsewhere in timespace where the familiar rules do not necessarily apply, whose powers are essentially scientific but are so alien and so far in advance of our own as to be indistiguishable from magic in our primitive insect minds. Lovecraft goes to great lengths to describe how INDESCRIBABLE their appearance, technology and architecture truly are. Some of these features - non-Euclidean geometry, etc. - would be very, very difficult to represent in a visual manner, although it might be possible to pull it off using forced perspective and optical illusions. Other features - including, but not limited to, four- and five-dimensional shapes, and even whole new colours - would be utterly impossible.

[Sammich]

If you haven't seen it already, a group called the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (http://www.cthulhulives.org/) produced a 1920's style silent film based on Call of Cthulhu. IMO it is one of the best adaptation to date of one of HPL's stories as it captures the creepiness and foreboding feeling perfectly. They also made a The Whisper in Darkness movie that I haven't seen yet.

Here is the trailer for Call of Cthulhu:

CBc-V1_Wan8

ATMOM was a pet project that Del Toro has been trying to get made since 1993, so this just wasn't something he decided he wanted to do on the spur of the moment. He even put a cameo of 2 Elder Things in the Troll Market scene in Hellboy 2. The reason he was so disappointed in the article was that he finally got funding and was in pre-production when he found out about the Prometheus storyline. I really think he could have pulled off a really good adaptation of ATMOM.