come anticipate guillermo del toro's "at the mountains of madness" with me

Can someone debunk the Tom Cruise lead rumors so I can relax and know this movie will be excellent?

Even though he would guarantee the movie actually being made which would be nice. But I just don't want him on screen.

tekeli-li tekeli-li

Well, no need to fret over Tom Cruise,I guess . . .

After three months of deliberation, Universal Pictures, the studio that gave del Toro money for pre-production creature designs, has remained unwilling to give the director a greenlight, citing concerns over the film’s budget and likely R rating. On Monday, del Toro withdrew from the negotiations, and that night at ten-thirty he sent me a short, mournful e-mail:

Madness has gone dark. The ‘R’ did us in.

Del Toro had told me that he would not compromise on the film’s rating, even though a film rated PG-13 would have a much easier time attracting a mass audience. “Madness,” as he imagined it, would not be particularly gory, but he insisted that he needed the artistic freedom “to make it really, really uncomfortable and nasty.” Del Toro had hoped that a greenlight for “Madness” would mark a new golden age for horror films:

Del Toro envisaged “Madness” as a “hard R” epic, shot in 3-D, with a blockbuster budget. Creating dozens of morphing creatures would be expensive, and much of the film needed to be shot somewhere that approximated Antarctica; one of the most disquieting aspects of Lovecraft’s novella is that the explorers are being pursued by monsters in a vast frozen void, and del Toro wanted to make the first horror movie on the scale of a David Lean production. But a “tent-pole horror film,” as del Toro put it, hadn’t been made in years. High-budget productions such as “Alien” and “The Shining” had been followed by decades of cheaper thrills. “The natural flaw of horror as a genre is that, ninety-nine per cent of the time, it’s a clandestine genre,” he said. “It lives and breathes—‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ the first ‘Saw,’ ‘The Blair Witch Project’—in dark little corners that come out and haunt you. Rarely is there a beautiful orchid that blooms.” He mentioned Hitchcock’s “The Birds”: “It was a major filmmaker using cutting-edge optical technology and special effects. It was a big-budget movie. It had Edith Head designing costumes, it had all the luxuries. And it was appealing because it had all the polished aspects of a studio film.”

According to Deadline.com, Universal executives felt that “Madness” would need to make at least five hundred million dollars in worldwide grosses in order to turn a profit, considering global marketing costs. It is possible that del Toro will now present the project to another studio.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/guillermo-del-toro-madness-has-gone-dark.html#ixzz1G3d845aI

Aw, fuck.

Sometimes it's just better than way.

nice article by Drew McWeeny about the state of the biz as it relates to 'mountains...' being scrapped

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/is-it-fair-to-blame-universal-for-the-state-of-the-industry-today

Universal badly wanted to be in the Guillermo Del Toro business. It was a priority to them, and when they made "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army," that was in large part a show of faith on the part of the studio. They wanted to make "Frankenstein" with Guillermo. They wanted to give him a home for his particular voice and vision. And when it came down to it, after a few years marked by expensive filmmmaker-driven flops and sure-thing properties that failed and cult fanboy favorites that no one turned out for, they looked at that R-rated $150 million horror film and said, "We can't." Not that they didn't want to, or that they don't believe in Guillermo, or that they want to make crap instead. They looked at the money they've made, the money they've lost, the choices that have led them to this place, and they said, "We can't."

:(

It was a no brainer that this would never be made the second they announced that del Toro wanted to make it. Besides, Carpenter already did the mutating gory monster in Antarctica thing as well as anyone ever will. For a visionary, del Toro is having some trouble getting the vision-thing working for him. "Madness" was never feasible, "Frankenstein" would be a disaster, "The Hobbit" was a poor fit. And yet, "Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth," his best movies, were both original scripts. Stick to your strengths, big guy! You've got great, original ideas. Make a movie out of your great, original ideas!

it's silly, you could totally make Mountains PG-13. The book isn't that violent, aside from mutilation-discoveries that could totally be managed at Star Wars-level gore.

50-ft penguins are the elephant in the room

50-ft penguins are the 50-ft penguins in the room

the cancellation of this project is so tragic and i hope he gets to make this movie one day. there are very few directors i'm as interested in seeing what they come up with as del toro.

it's silly, you could totally make Mountains PG-13. The book isn't that violent, aside from mutilation-discoveries that could totally be managed at Star Wars-level gore.

OTM

dude had a hard R vision

Not dead yet, getting better, etc.

Somewhat of an uh.

GDT entering competition for unluckiest filmmaker in the game

though i'm looking at the imdb for pacific rim and the cast is p awesome

so basically space jockeys = old ones, aliens = shoggoths

(seriously fuck off to anyone who thinks that's a "spoiler")

You heartless cynic etc

Nah it's just kinda obvious that's the route they're gonna take with Prometheus. Lovecraft invented so many sci-fi/horror tropes that are still being used that it's pretty easy to spot the influence.

Xenoarcheology

lame

Enjoyed the first episode of The Strain! (Don't know if it's being discussed elsewhere) Very well put-together nonsense.

That seems to be the general takeaway. Basically, as long as you begin by understanding it is nonsense, the rest comes very easily.

Wow, "The Book of Life" (which he produced) has got to be one of the most gorgeous films I've seen in years. I sort of want to see it again to see it in 3D. Loved it.

Did I say "Book of Life" was gorgeous? Well "Crimson Peak," while both overheated and undercooked, boasts some of the most sumptuous production design I've seen in years. I'd see it again in a heartbeat despite it having nothing much else compelling really going for it beyond some impressively bloody make-up. Because I mean, who really makes a ghost movie where the demonic scary ghosts are supporting players at best? Surprised they didn't just go all the way and reveal it's all been a book she was writing ... or was it?

Man, del Toro, what is up with you? You spend years juggling dream projects, then when you finally do make a movie - this, "Pacific Rim" - it's something that no one really wanted.

What might have been:

https://money.yahoo.com/tom-cruise-versus-cthulhu-inside-104759713.html

I would have watched that! V intriguing

I would have watched that on an airplane

Wouldn't mind seeing more of the concept art, that one image was pretty good.