Hot on the heels of announcing his next film will be the
long-gestating adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, Guillermo Del Toro may already be running into
friction with Universal regarding cast. According to Collider, sources say the
fan-favorite director has his eye on Tom Cruise for the lead, while the studio
has their tentacles wrapped around future Professor X James McAvoy.
While this is all rumor, with pre-production on the film
only just begun, the story raises some questions, chiefly being the age of the
two actors. Having some familiarity with both the story and an older draft of
the script, I can say that the main character of William Dyer is written for a
young man of 25, perfect for McAvoy, who toplined Universal's hit Wanted.
Professor Lake, the driven scientific leader of Mountain's ill-fated artic expedition, is a middle-aged
character and far more appropriate for Cruise. However, Del Toro has stated the
he and writing partner Matthew Robbins are currently rewriting their
13-year-old script, so it is possible they have tailored the role to Cruise, or
created a new character altogether.
As one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood, Cruise has
a long history of flirting-with-then-abandoning genre projects as varied as Watchmen, Iron Man, Salt, The Brothers Bloom, and even Edward
Scissorhands! Currently on a career downslide, taking a role where he will be
playing opposite some of the craziest monsters to graze the silver screen could
be just what the doctor ordered. Whoever gets cast, the real star of the show
will be Del Toro and his depiction of Lovecraft's mind-boggling Cthulhu Mythos,
the likes of which have only been hinted at in creature-tribute pictures such
as The Thing and The Mist.
If Del Toro does plan to go the route of using stars it
would be no different from how Kubrick subverted Nicholson's image for The
Shining. The whole reason the project has
been in limbo all these years is studio reticence with the material, which is
both widely unknown to the general public and dark/downbeat as it gets. Hedging
bets by supplying a movie star or two for audiences to latch onto would not be
the worst idea.
