It’s no secret in Hollywood that the upcoming adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness—directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) and produced by James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic)-—has been a long time coming for the H.P. Lovecraft 1936 horror novella, having never been adapted in its long-standing history. After dropping out of the directing role for The Hobbit, Del Toro went public that “Madness” would be his prime focus and that Cameron’s Fusion Camera System will be used to shoot the proposed film.
Then … things went quiet. Meetings were held, the script was written and rewritten (which Del Toro penned with his writing partner Matthew Robbins) but little hard information regarding the casting of the project has been made known. Tom Cruise has been a name thrown around as a rumored front-runner for the lead, but Del Toro has consistently blown off direct inquiries.
Cameron, however, might have let something slip regarding Cruise’s potential involvement. While doing press for Sanctum, Cameron tells MTV, "Tom does want to do the picture…I don't think we have a deal with him yet, but we're hoping to get that closed soon. Guillermo is madly working on a new draft of the script…hopefully we'll be shooting by June or July."
Further, Del Toro talks to MTV regarding the script rewrite: “"Matthew [Robbins] and I believe that a screenplay like that you have to tackle again every so often…we keep updating anything we haven’t shot, we keep saying, ‘Let’s do another rewrite,’ ...thirteen years ago it was a big challenge, but right now what we’re doing is keeping it alive,” he said.
So what we do know is that there is some mad writing going on and Cruise (ugh…) is likely to take the lead. If they’re aiming for a summer shoot, look for more concrete announcements coming from the project soon.