While some authors have seen great success in having their works adapted to the screen, H.P. Lovecraft is not among them. Most of his stories have been difficult to adapt, yielding campy, low-budget movies that lacked the dread and horror of Lovecraft’s stories.
Guillermo del Toro isn’t about to let the previous failures of adapting Lovecraft stop him. The Hellboy director told Sci-Fi Wire that he’d love to film his adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness once he’s finished with Hellboy II: The Golden Army. He does realize the limitations of creating a low-budget Lovecraftian horror, however. The reason he hasn’t started on Mountains yet is simple: ”There is no one knocking at my door with the budget, saying, 'Let's make it.'"
The director has been working on a script adaptation for five years now, and from what he has to say, it really sounds like he gets why Lovecraft is worth reading: "What I love about [it] is that the cosmic-horror aspect of Lovecraft--the fact that we are alone in a universe that does not care about humankind, mankind--has not been explored. The insignificance of man in the scope of the cosmos, which is at the heart of the horror, which is a Pascalian horror, the horror of the empty spaces, has not been explored in film.” Now, whether the director can adapt that feeling, the horror of empty spaces, onto film is another question entirely.
In the meantime, del Toro continues work on Hellboy II, which is looking like an incredible follow up to the first movie. Hopefully before that’s finished shooting someone will show interest in At the Mountains of Madness. If not, let’s hope del Toro continues to keep the project alive in some way until he can find funding. After all, if he could make a Hellboy sequel happen after all the obstacles that it faced, I’m sure he can track down the means to create a good Lovecraft story.
