Guillermo del Toro gives hope for At The Mountains of Madness

Over the Halloween weekend I got to see a sneak preview of Guillermo del Toro’s long awaited Pinocchio movie at Animation is Film Festival, which was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater (no surprise that it was amazing and more on that later). Fans had an opportunity to ask him questions in the lobby which was populated with screen-used props and models as he was talking with us. When asked about his resilience to continue working on Pinocchio for over 8 years, he responded with an anecdote that further elaborated on how far into production of At the Mouth of Madness was was before the production was cancelled. Even recalling the exact moment in time when he got the call that pulled the plug.

With Mountains of Madness, I have gone to sketch all the storyboards all the creatures. We have maquettes. Come to my house, I’ll show you! Creating effects at ILM. I was scouting in a helicopter in Alaska. Flying the helicopter over a pack of wolves. Over the ice. And I got a phone call and they said, “you gotta come to the studio. It’s over.” I said to my team, “good practice. We just had a really good practice. We know each other better. We can design really well. So, next…” If somebody comes out and says do you want to do it I go “Yeah”, and then we go on it there’s no permanent “no” and you know that the movies going when you see the glory. There’s never a complete “no”. When we were gonna give up on Pinocchio, I went to Netflix because I have an incredibly good run of creative control. And I went we presented it to that’s how I look. And in that same day, in that same room, he said yes. So all you need is one “yes”. It’s like marrying or going to a prom…

With the notion of there never being a “complete no”, him expressing interest in making it one day, and Pinocchio going through everything it did to finally get made there still remains a shimmer of hope that the greatest movie never made could still very much be on the table. If we’re lucky enough to see this project realized I hope we’re able to do so with the original lineup that was planned with Universal all those years ago…