The Mexican director told The Kingcast podcast that he was ready to resurrect HP Lovecraft’s work for Netflix.
The last episode of the podcast The Kingcast invited Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth) to discuss his favorite Stephen King novels, what makes clowns so scary, and, of course, Nightmare Alley coming out next january.
The hosts took the opportunity to ask him where his adaptation of the science fiction novel is. The Hallucinated Mountains by HP Lovecraft, which he has dreamed of achieving for 15 years. What if his working relationship with Netflix could lead to this project finally seeing the light of day.
As a reminder, this project almost came to fruition after the filmmaker abandoned The Hobbit in 2010. At that point, Universal announced that the studio would be doing The Hallucinated Mountains in 3D with Guillermo del Toro directing, Tom Cruise in the lead. poster and James Cameron in production. But in March 2011, the studio finally dropped the project because funding a $ 150 million film with an under-17 ban was too risky.
In The Kingcast, Guillermo del Toro states that he is still motivated to direct The Hallucinated Mountains, but that he has to rewrite his original screenplay:
“The script I co-wrote 15 years ago is not the script I would do now, so I have to rewrite it“said del Toro.”Not just to shrink it one way or another, but because at the time I was trying to inject elements into it that would make it a blockbuster so that it goes through the machinery of the studio. And I think I don’t need to reconcile that anymore. I can go to a much more esoteric, weirder, and more modest version where I can go back to some of the scenes that were left out.“
A stranger version
“Some of the big decor pieces that I designed, for example, I don’t want to keep them anymore“, continued the director.”I have already done this or that piece and I want to go in a stranger direction. I know some things will stick. I know the ending we have is one of the most intriguing, weird, and unsettling endings for me, so there are about four horror sets that I love about the original script.“he confides.
But will the man with a thousand projects really make it happen? Nothing is less sure. “Right now I’m developing two storylines, one of which I think will be the next. I’m busy finishing Pinocchio, to produce Cabinet of Curiosities in Toronto and recovering from the post-pandemic domino effect. Everything I had programmed over three years, all of a sudden, everything has to be delivered at the same time. But that’s my hope.“Patience, then.
