DEL TORO'S HPL FILM TO BE ANIMATED?

Now that Guillermo del Toro's animated adaptation of Pinocchio has met with critical success, he is considering using the same format to resurrect a movie that he has wanted to produce for many years, H.P. Lovecraft's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. He has already had conversations with special effects master, Phil Tippett, to film it as a stop-motion, animated feature. The combination of these two would make for a fantastic adaptation of HPL's longest work.

Guillermo del Toro Plans to Adapt 'The Mountain of Madness' in Stop Motion

By Shrishty Mishra | December 1, 2022 | Collider.com

Thanks to Guillermo del Toro, fans have had their fill of horror stories this year. The acclaimed filmmaker did an eight-part anthology series, Cabinet of Curiosities for Netflix, which gave a new twist to spooky season and now fans have enjoyed his stop-motion animation feature, Pinocchio, in theaters which is a retelling of the classic kid's story with del Toro’s touch! But there’s one project the Academy Award-winning director has been eyeing making for a long time, an adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Mountain of Madness. In a new interview with IndieWire he hinted that it might finally come out as an animated feature.

The director conceived the idea sometime between making 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth and 2015’s Crimson Peak, however, it was too ambitious for rigorous studio machinery to green light. Written in 1931 the classic Lovecraft tale follows a doomed exploration to Antarctica. It is told from the perspective of protagonist Dr. William Dyer and acts as a warning for others who may be interested in having their own adventure to the previously unseen continent. Throughout the story, we learn about larger-than-life monsters and a long-lost civilization that used to inhabit the snow-clad lands. All of them have vanished but for a collection of their sculptures and murals.

In the new interview, del Toro revealed that he spoke with VFX veteran Phil Tippett, the genius behind features like Mad God, the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, and RoboCop. They discussed translating the director’s original pitch for The Mountain of Madness into a stop-motion production just like Pinocchio. “I said it would be ideal to do ‘Mountains of Madness’ as stop-motion,” del Toro said. Adding, “You watch the animation in a more rapturous way than live action. It’s almost a hypnotic act, and the relationship to the story becomes more intimate in that way.”

And this is a test clip from del Toro's earlier pitch for the film in CGI: