Guillermo Del Toro has been shooting his mouth off about his forthcoming adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. When Del Toro signed up with Paramount to work on The Hobbit, the status of AtMoM was uncertain, but it seems the deal has turned out to be quite fortuitous for the project. Del Toro speaks to Fear.net:
"Part of the arrangement with Universal – in being essentially there for now until 2017 – part of the arrangement was they would finance research and development for Mountains of Madness. And we are doing it."
And how's the R&D going? According to Del Toro, Lovecraft didn't take into consideration the limitations modern CG technology when he described AtMoM's Shoggoths and Elder Things:
"If you talk about shape-shifting to the degree that these creatures do, then you're talking about, essentially – if you're using traditional tools – you're going to need to generate 30, 40 models fully rendered per creature. That's A, limiting and B, incredibly expensive."
Apparently, like Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings, Del Toro will need to create original technology to handle the modelling (which he says will be called 'The Howard'). I admire directors that adapt technology to their vision, rather than the other way around, but I also think there are clever ways to represent the Mythos bestiary without resorting to CG. Case in point: the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's spectacular radio play.
