The sci-fi movie that killed Guillermo del Toro’s in the conversion of madness mountains

There is no movie I’m more excited about in 2025 than Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein”. The A luxurious trailer suggests that “Frankenstein” Del Toro could be the verifying adjustment of “The Modern Prometheus,” Mary Shelley “ But he is also unmistakably his film; He considers this Part of a thematic trilogy with “Hightmare Alley” and “Pinocchio.”

Del Toro is one of the leading fantasy and horror directors we work today. “Frankenstein” will bring him back to direct science fiction for the first time since “Pacific Rim.” (“Water shape” may have a fish man as a main character, but it is definitely more of a fairy tale than sci-fi.)

Besides “Frankenstein,” another classic sci-fi story that Del Toro has wanted to adapt for a long time: HP LOVECRAFT “in The Mountains of Madness.” Published in 1936 (shortly before the death of Lovecraft), the story follows a university research team in Antarctica. When some of the explorers are found to be cruel, the geologist William Dyer and his student Danforth research and encounter a prehistoric city, which houses many angular older things (also known as the oldest) who walked the earth about a billion years before human civilization germinated. The shoggoths were destroyed by the civilization of the oldest things, a dragon race of shapes shapes they created and rose against them. Dyer and Danforth survive (the events of the novel are reported in the first person by Dyer), but Danforth is irrevocably driven.

Guillermo Del Toro had been trying to do “in the mountains of madness” since the early 2000s, but he did not find his home in Warner Bros. In 2010, he was able to progress at Universal; James Cameron (first read “Alita” thanks to his friendship with Del Toro) He would produce and Tom Cruise was the best choice to star. The film then collapsed again due to budgetary concerns and Del Toro refusing to book Rating Rag.

Del Toro has a ton of unrealized projects, oa Live-acting adaptation of Fanga “Monster,” Manga Naoki Urasawa “ to a third “Hellboy” movie. For a while, his “Frankenstein” had fallen into hell developed. “In the mountains of madness” remains something Del Toro fans want to see, especially after Del Toro shared some CGI test photos from the project in 2022.

But there is another reason that the filmmaker gave up trying to make “in the Madness mountains” after canceling 2011. The following year, another science fiction film came out with a similar default: Preaquel “alien” Ridley Scott, “Prometheus.”

On April 30, 2012, shortly before the release of “Prometheus” that June, of the bull posted on the movie bull forum that the film “probably will notice a long pause – if not the demise – o (‘by the mountains of madness’).”

“‘Prometheus began filming a little back-to-date at the time we were in pre-production on’ Pacific Rim. ‘The title gave himself a pause knowing that Lovecraft and his novel were heavily influenced by’ alien ‘. This time, decades later with the budget and where Ridley Scott occupied, I assumed that Greece’s conversion referred to the HPL book aspects.

Now that “Prometheus” has been released long, it is clear that Del Toro is right on the money. Scott’s film is set in the early 22nd century and follows astronauts tracing the archaeological clues of ancient civilization on Earth. They reach the planet LV-223, which holds an ancient structure built by the alien engineers, the creators of the human race. But the engineers’ intentions towards their children are not so kind and the secrets in their temple were better buried. As the tagline for “Prometheus” says: “The search for our start could lead to our end.”

Damon Lindelof’s “Prometheus” writer and “Prometheus” pulled from the 1968 book “Chariots of the Gods?” By Erich von Däniken, the root of the theory “ancient astronauts” that humans are elevated by alien visitors in prehistory. But there is a lot of love in “Prometheus,” too. All the premise of researchers investigating an ancient alien city are out of “by the mountains of madness.”

Creating life is also a key theme in both stories; The engineers created us just like the oldest created by the Shoggoths. The engineers are much more understandable than Lovecraft tentacled monsters – they look like tall, pale, bare and just as deadly humans as we are. Although the oldest and their civilization completely challenge understanding, the engineers are inserted into too different from their children. They experimented with forces beyond their ability to dominate and now want to clean up the failed experiment that is ground. What is more dreadful, an incomprehensible void of madness or know and understanding Humans have no more divine heritage than lab rats?

The big and obvious difference is that “Prometheus” is placed in space. That means some movement for the horror, but “in the mountains of madness” is about horrific secrets buried in our world. When Lovecraft wrote the story in the 1930s, Antarctica was still hardly examined. As a manga modification “to the Madness mountains” Gou Tanabe describes:

“Although larger than Europe or Australia, the existence of the unadinized Antarctic continent remained until the 19th century (… … forbidden and far, the last of the continents to be discovered remained tread on them for decades. Then, just as the 19th century was abducted, being close to the origin, of different series, Coasts, and inside Antarctica. “

Lovecraft was not the first or last storyteller to illustrate Antarctica as a land of frozen horror. He drew from Novel 1838 Edgar Allan Poe “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,” Featuring his leader finds great horror at the South Pole. In 1938, author John W. Campbell published a short story “Who goes there?” About an Antarctic outlet attacked by a shaped monster. Decades later, that story became source material for John Carpenter’s classic film “The Thing.”

Could Del Toro have been the next master to leave his mark on the horror of the Antarctic? He is a romantic filmmaker on the whole who loves his monsters, but when Del Toro wants to do so, he can make dreadful monsters: the teeth fairy in “Hellboy,” The Pale Man In “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the Red Ghosts in “Crimson Peak,” and so on. Labyrinth “endings” inherits whenSuch a good movie inspired the Paramore music video) And “Alley Nightmare” is also quite serious. As hidden is a man as Del Toro seems to be, I suspect he would water a bare Lovecraft while doing “by the mountains of madness.”

After “Frankenstein,” Will “at the Madness mountains” will Del Toro’s passion project next to rise from the dead? “Prometheus” is now old news, and Ridley Scott has no more “alien” movies coming. If Del Toro shared the test pictures of him back in 2022, then I do not suspect his heart was still in it. Apparently it depends on whether Netflix is ​​more supportive than Warner Bros. A Universal.

Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is expected to be released on Netflix in November 2025.