Director Guillermo del Toro’s new Netflix series director Guillermo del Toro and superstar action hero Tom Cruise ed forces to start pre-production on At The Mountains of Madness. An ambitious adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s classic story of the same name, At The Mountains of Madness went on to become one of Tom Cruise’s best unmade horror movies.
However, the presence of the title “The Dreams in the Witch House” in the episode listing of del Toro's new horror anthology Cabinet of Curiosities proves that the Netflix series will see the director finally adapt Lovecraft. While del Toro's adaptation of At The Mountains of Madness has been in Development Hell for over a decade now, the positive reception of Cabinet of Curiosities could potentially revive interest in the lost horror adventure movie. Not only that, but the smaller scale of the horror anthology series could also convince del Toro to make At The Mountains of Madness a less massively ambitious undertaking, something that would make the supposedly unfilmable adaptation much more accessible.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Unmade HP Lovecraft Horror Movie
In 2011, At The Mountains of Madness would have seen del Toro mount an adaptation of Lovecraft’s seminal cosmic horror story. While original horror movies are excelling at the box office in 2022, ten years ago, they were a riskier proposition for producers. Most financiers balked at the massive $150 million price tag that del Toro’s At The Mountains of Madness came with, and it was not entirely unreasonable for them to do so. Despite being a formative text in cosmic horror history, Lovecraft’s story is very sparse in of incident, mostly following two Antarctic explorers as they slowly uncover a lost, abandoned city filled with inscriptions that have huge, history-altering implications.
Similarly, Lovecraft’s story “The Dreams in the Witch House” also relies on suggestion more than depiction, meaning that its adaptation in Cabinet of Curiosities might be a perfect dry run for a bigger Lovecraft movie from director Guillermo del Toro. Everything from Stephen King's work to Stranger Things, to Rick and Morty’s Cthulhu cameos, have conspired to make Lovecraft’s previously obscure lore more recognizable to viewers in 2022, meaning Cabinet of Curiosities will be adapting the author’s work at a time when his mythos isn’t as unfamiliar as it once was. This could prove helpful for At The Mountains of Madness, since the esoteric nature of Lovecraft’s writing was part of what made the project unappealing in 2011.
Why del Toro's At The Mountains of Madness Hasn’t Happened Yet
The main reason that At The Mountains of Madness never came together is that the del Toro movie would have been a $150 million R-rated horror movie adapted from one of the most famously un-filmable authors. Every time the creators got close, someone balked. When director Guillermo del Toro almost had the project ready to film in 2012, $150 million was deemed too expensive for an R-rated movie. While Top Gun: Maverick’s box-office success proved that Tom Cruise could potentially lead the del Toro movie to success and Deadpool and Logan broke R-rated box office records, Cruise’s The Mummy remake proved that even an A-list star couldn’t make a horror blockbuster succeed.
Why At The Mountains of Madness Could Work In 2022
During an interview on horror movie adaptation could also pull off a shocking twist that would have alienated audiences in 2011 due to its need for an inherently smaller budget.
Del Toro’s Lovecraft Movie Could Revive A Tom Cruise Twist
For a long time, Cruise was attached to the more expensive version of At The Mountains of Madness. Now that Top Gun: Maverick has fully reignited Cruise's star power, this shocking twist is still available for del Toro’s movie. Initially, the lead character of the Lovecraft story is the adventurous Professor Lake, who fearlessly ventures into the titular mountains with a small expedition at the start of the story and discovers the frozen bodies of monstrous alien beings. However, he is then killed by these beings out of nowhere and the narrator becomes the real lead of At The Mountains of Madness.
Since Tom Cruise’s characters rarely die, casting Cruise as the conventionally heroic Lake could lead the Guillermo del Toro horror movie to shock audiences who assume that his character is the main protagonist of At The Mountains of Madness. Not only that, but since del Toro doesn’t want to do the original $150 million version of At The Mountains of Madness that he pitched in 2011, the movie could keep its budget a bit lower by only requiring Cruise for a third of the story. This would be the best of both worlds, allowing del Toro to make the most of Cruise’s star power, surprising audiences, and translating the bleak shock factor of Lovecraft’s work to the screen.
Cabinet of Curiosities Proves del Toro’s Lovecraft Movie Would Work
While it may not be enough to revive del Toro’s adaptation, the Cabinet of Curiosities episode "Dreams in the Witch House" provided the sort of small-scale, intimate interpretation of the author’s work that the director argued could work for At the Mountains of Madness. Judging by its source material, "Dreams in the Witch House" could have become an overblown, CGI-swamped mess. However, director Catherine Hardwicke pared back the episode and made a sparse, tragic, effectively creepy tale (aside from a few sentient vines). Relying on only a handful of actors and a few locations, "Dreams in the Witch House" implied a whole unseen universe of chilling Lovecraft lore beneath the surface of the simple story. What made the Cabinet of Curiosities episode effective was the same quality that could salvage a more modest, faithful movie adaption of At the Mountains of Madness.
Why At The Mountains of Madness (Still) Might Not Happen
Tom Cruise is a busy man, and even Top Gun 3 can’t happen (a guaranteed hit) without his say-so. A comparatively modest, risky project like Guillermo del Toro’s horror movie adaptation of At The Mountains of Madness might have a hard time gaining the actor’s services, and Cruise might reasonably be put off by the thought of his character being killed off early on in proceedings. Not only that, but the critical acclaim of Cabinet of Curiosities may not translate to streaming success, meaning del Toro’s anthology horror series might end up proving there is no major untapped market for an adaptation of Lovecraft’s work in 2022. However, if Cabinet of Curiosities fares as well with viewers as the horror anthology show has done with reviewers, there is no reason that At The Mountains of Madness needs to languish in Development Hell for much longer.