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Guillermo del Toro still wants to make his unmade H.P. Lovecraft project – and has even pitched it to Netflix.
The director has an ongoing first-look deal with the streamer and among the initial projects he showed Netflix was his adaptation of Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness.
"Take a wild guess which were the first projects I presented, you know? I went through the cupboards and found Monte Cristo and Mountains of Madness. Those were a couple of the ones I presented first," he told The Kingcast podcast (H/T IndieWire).
Del Toro first tried to adapt the project way back in 2006, then later in 2011 with Tom Cruise attached to star. Both attempts eventually fell through.
Lovecraft's novella chronicles a doomed expedition to Antarctica, with the narrator attempting to stop another expedition to the continent by revealing the horrors uncovered on his own trip.
"The thing with Mountains is, the screenplay I co-wrote 15 years ago is not the screenplay I would do now, so I need to do a rewrite," the director said. "Not only to scale it down somehow, but because back then I was trying to bridge the scale of it with elements that made it somewhat be able to go through the studio machinery."
He added: "And I think I don't need to reconcile that anymore. I can go to a far more esoteric, weirder, smaller version of it 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. I've already done this or that giant set piece. I feel like going into a weirder direction. I know a few things will stay, I know the ending we have is one of the most intriguing, weird, unsettling endings for me, so there's about four horror set pieces that I love in the original script."
Del Toro continued to explain that he needs time to rewrite the project, and is currently developing two screenplays, finishing Pinocchio, and producing his horror anthology series Cabinets of Curiosity – but if Mountains of Madness were to get made, he would like to go for a mostly unknown cast.
It remains to be seen if del Toro's weirder take on the story will make it to Netflix, but in the meantime, his next project to be released is Nightmare Alley, which arrives this December 17.
Until then, check out our guide to all the upcoming major movie release dates to start planning those theater trips.
