Guillermo Del Toro Watch: From The Mountains Of Madness To Pacific Rim

There was a bit of a kerfuffle today regarding Guillermo del Toro projects. io9 incorrectly reported that GdT would start shooting At the Mountains of Madness, his 150 million dollar, R-rated, 3D adaptation of an HP Lovecraft story, this summer. Every news site ran the story, but only HitFix’s Drew McWeeny checked into it, and both GdT and producer Don Murphy were like ‘I don’t know about that.’

Just as soon as that was debunked, news came down from Deadline - GdT is leaving At the Mountains of Madness behind for the time being and getting to work on Pacific Rim. You’ll remember Pacific Rim from some months ago when it was rumored that Travis Beacham’s spec about giant monsters terrorizing the world would be retrofitted into a Godzilla movie. That ended up not being the case, and Gareth Edwards has since been assigned to Godzilla.

Pacific Rim is a big, PG-13 movie for Legendary (the same people doing Godzilla, so you see where the confusion arose), but most importantly it’s going this fall. Guillermo has been attached to non-starter projects for years now - first The Hobbit, which he left when it looked like MGM would never get their shit together (and which still is having trouble getting started, by the way) and now Mountains. Universal has been really shy about pulling the trigger on the film, even with Tom Cruise all but signed on to star and James Cameron blessing the 3D. The budget and the R-rating just made it too scary for a studio that has been really burned in recent years by taking chances.

The important thing for me is that Guillermo del Toro is finally making another goddamned movie. This guy has spent the last few years sidelined by real stupid bullshit, and since he’s one of the biggest talents in film today it’s been a bummer watching him sit on his hands.

Or at least we hope he’s making another movie. Fingers crossed.