Yesterday, we brought you new details about Legendary and Universal’s upcoming big-budget sequel Pacific Rim 2, which were revealed during a recent interview director Guillermo del Toro did with the Wall Street Journal. In that same interview, del Toro also touched on his longtime dream project At the Mountains of Madness, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novel which was shuttered by Universal back in 2011 after del Toro wanted to do it with a R-rating and a $120+ million budget. Now, it appears, del Toro is willing to reconsider his stance on the rating.
Now that he has what is being described as “a new home” at Legendary, del Toro wants to finally get At the Mountains of Madness moving again. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, he said:
“I said to them, that’s the movie that I would really love to do one day, and it’s still expensive, it’s still … I think that now, with the way I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic. There’s basically one or two scenes in the book that people don’t remember that are pretty graphic. Namely, for example, the human autopsy that the aliens do, which is a very shocking moment. But I think I can find ways of doing it. We’ll see. It’s certainly a possibility in the future. Legendary was very close to doing it at one point, so I know they love the screenplay. So, we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll happen. It’s certainly one of the movies I would love to do.”
Hopefully, del Toro has figured out a way to make the movie he wants to make and still get it to a PG-13 rating. Whether he’ll run into problems with the MPAA because of his admission that he’s trying to make use of the “flexible” system remains to be seen – as does whether Legendary will bite. Though Pacific Rim 2 is happening, that much more crowd-friendly project was never a certainty, and the studio has to draw the line with its filmmakers somewhere, even ones as crazily talented as del Toro.
We’ll keep you posted as more on At the Mountains of Madness emerges, but for now, tell us, would you like to see the film with a PG-13 rating?