Guillermo del Toro's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS Could Happen as a Stop-Motion Animated Movie
H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness has been a passion project for director Guillermo del Toro, and it’s something that he just hasn’t been able to get off the ground and into production. It’s a project that he’s not giving up on, and after making his stop-motion animated film, Pinocchio, the filmmaker is now considering developing At the Mountain of Madness as a stop-motion animated film with visual effect artist legend Phil Tippett!
This news comes from IndieWire and the filmmaker went on to tell them: "I said it would be ideal to do Mountains of Madness as stop-motion. You watch the animation in a more rapturous way than live action. It's almost a hypnotic act, and the relationship to the story becomes more intimate in that way."
I would actually love to see Del Toro do this! I would love to see At The Mountain of Madness as a stop-motion animated film! It could be a visually stunning and terrifying film and it would be incredible if Del Toro and Tippett teamed up to make it happen.
It would be a long and costly production, but it would be so worth it. Del Toro seems to have a strong relationship with Netflix with projects such as Cabinet of Curiosities and Pinocchio, and it seems like Netflix would be the most obvious place for him to do it. But, we’ll see if that’s something they actually want to do.
Del Toro previously talked about doing the film at Netflix and talked about the project saying:
"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."
He went on to say that if he got to make the movie at Netflix, he could “go to a far more esoteric, weirder, smaller version of it” and shared:
"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."
Tom Cruise was originally set to star in the original project, but Del Toro wouldn’t bring him in now. He is looking to cast mostly unknowns:
"You know, I think the age has changed now. Tom is fifteen years older. I think ... would be a different cast. If I can, I would go for mostly unknowns and make the journey the star."
The director also talked about how crazy and unsettling the ending of the story is, saying:
"I know the ending we have is one the most intriguing, weird, unsettling endings, for me. There's about four horror set pieces that I love in the original script. So, you know, it would be my hope. I certainly get a phone call every six months from Don Murphy going 'Are we doing this or what? Are you doing this next or what?' and I say 'I have to take the time to rewrite it.'"
At the Mountains of Madness centers on a 1930s expedition to Antarctica, in which a group of explorers led by a scientist encounters the remnants of an ancient civilization.
I hope that Del Toro finally gets to bring this story to life. I don’t care how he does it, I just want to see it!