At the Mountains of Madness

[Sammich]

Since this isn't going to be made into a movie here is the original story (which was reimaged into Prometheus). It is about an ill fated expedition sent from Arkham University to Antarctica that discovers an ancient city that was built by a now "dead" race of aliens. As they explore further it becomes evident that these aliens may have become victim of their own creations.

At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, Written in March of 1931 (http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm)

Also, here is an Italian fan made animation of ATMOM:

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* Remember to click on cc for the english subtitles *

[Danny]

well i guess i figured out the connection to the space pilots the xenos have now..

[AcesandEights]

Pretty big fan of the original story and would have loved a permutation inspired by it along the lines of Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but HPL's works have their tentacles in enough stuff, even if it's more as inspiration. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I'll hope Prometheus delivers.

[Neil]

I have to be honest, really didn't think much of it story wise. The animation was inventive, if a little slow paced, but the story?

These alien beings, attacked by these other beings from another dimension, summoned those beings from that dimension, before then being attacked my their slaves which have gained intelligence, before we discover the alien beings weren't dead, and neither were the slaves... But neither were the original beings from another dimension... Meh!

[krakenslayer]

the original story (which was reimaged into Prometheus).

Not entirely accurate: Prometheus was conceived and produced as a completely independent screenplay with no relation to Del Toro's proposed picture. However, having seen Prometheus, Del Toro and his producers decided that there was enough coincidental similarity between the film and the screenplay they were developing that the trade and public would consider their version of At the Mountains of Madness derivative of Prometheus were it to be released shortly afterwards (even though AtMoM was in pre-production, in one form or another, for years before Scott's film).

It's possible, even likely, that the writers of Prometheus were inspired by Lovecraft's world (basically any story that is based upon the idea of pre-human civilization is going to share some of that provenance), but its origin is not a direct re-working of At the Mountains of Madness, either in the form of the original story or Del Toro's script.