Guillermo del Toro: Still Hopeful for At the Mountains of Madness, Hellboy 3 Unlikely
Posted 10.31.11 by BrentJS
Visionary director Guillermo del Toro will begin shooting Pacific Rim "in five weeks." As highly anticipated as the "giant monsters vs. giant robots movie" might be among del Toro fans, many still consider it a poor substitute for his planned adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, which was shelved back in March after Universal balked at the estimated production budget and R-rating. But del Toro is not giving up hope that At the Mountains of Madness will get off the ground one of these days.
The Pacific Rim and Mountains of Madness news came during a recent interview del Toro gave to promote the Blu-ray debut of Mimic — his first movie to be given a wide theatrical release in the US. (Cronos was only released in two US theaters.) Speaking to The Coventry Telegraph, del Toro said that he is doing his "best for it to happen," but that he likely won't pursue it as a follow-up to Pacific Rim because of the scale of the two movies.
I'm not sure I'll want to do it right away after Pacific Rim, which is a huge movie, so maybe I'll want to do something smaller afterwards, I don't know.
I stopped having plans after Madness, because it always blows up in my face. I think I'm getting closer and closer to finding another short story to be made. I've got a lot of scripts, but it's getting the backing to shoot them.
Del Toro went on to say that Lovecraft is "one of the great unacknowledged writers" and that his influence is evident in everything from sci-fi classics like Alien to the comic books that inspired the Hellboy movies.
[Lovecraft is] not only influential, but one of the great unacknowledged writers. And not only his cosmic horror — there are the smaller tales too. When people think about Lovecraft, they often think about the big gothic monsters, but he had stuff like "The Dreams In The Witch House," and "The Thing On The Doorstep," which were very influential.
Mike Mignola's Hellboy was influenced by Lovecraft big time. He wanted to make his monsters Lovecraftian. But I think many other films have been influenced by Lovecraft — like Alien, which is almost an outer-space version of At The Mountains Of Madness.
So, what about the oft-talked about sequel to Hellboy II: The Golden Army? Despite the fact that del Toro said he "would love to do it" and title star Ron Perlman has apparently gotten over his dislike of the makeup process, del Toro did not sound confident that there would ever be a Hellboy 3.
I would love to have an answer to that. But I had a meeting with some potential studio producers about it, and they don't seem to be interested in going for it. So I really don't know if I'll be able to make that happen in time before Ron Perlman becomes a geriatric.