En las montañas de la locura

Nuevas noticias sobre la película de "las montañas de la locura" dirigida por Guillermo del Toro, quien creo honestamente que es de los poquíiiiisimos directores que en este momento sería capaz de hacer una buena adaptación de Lovecraft al cine (a nivel de "gran proyecto", no en plan cine cutre salchichero):

Está en inglés. Al final resumo lo importante.

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[...]DNY: That’s diplomatic. Why did you instead choose At the Mountains of Madness, a much harder picture to get greenlit?

Del Toro : I came out of The Hobbit, and it was the biggest heartbreak I’ve experienced as a filmmaker, because I will never know what that movie would have been. I was very mindful that I didn’t want to have a rebound movie, as happens sometimes when somebody comes off a long romance. There were very big, lucrative, beautiful projects on the table, and I was developing one of them with Jim Cameron. In my stubborn fashion, I slipped Jim the script, again, when we were meeting on that other project. He said, you still want to do that? To his credit, he said, well, let’s pursue that instead. This is the movie I most want to do. I haven’t done horror in a long time. Devil’s Backbone tries to make the ghost a victim, and not a scary character. Blade 2 is more action than horror. I really love the genre and last time I did a horror film was Mimic, and that was not a horror for the right reasons. That’s a muscle I want to flex. Frankenstein has the mitigating factor that for a length of the narrative, you favor the monster. For horror to work, you have to be afraid. You have to keep the monster in a black and white light. I mostly love monsters too much to see them in that light, but Lovecraft allows me to.

NY: Because the villain is an otherworldly species?

Del Toro: Because the proportion is so big. When the monster has a dimension that allows you to humanize it, that’s the route I usually want to go. The cosmic proportions of the Lovecraft horror are so immense, it forces you to find humanity in other aspects of the tale. You can keep the monster inhuman, remote and scary, which is a great benefit.

DNY: Universal needed to be convinced to make this film, which is a bold play. I’ve heard there was a meeting with you, Jim, Ron Meyer and his Universal execs that swung the deal. How did you walk away with a yes?

Del Toro: Adam Fogelson and Donna Langley have always been friends of the project. The screenplay that is on the internet is an old screenplay, and the one I gave to Jim and Universal is different. When I came back from The Hobbit, I gave my Jimmy Stewart Mr. Smith Goes to Washington speech at Universal. I pitch with heart on sleeve, and Donna and Adam were moved, liked the new take and said, let’s develop it hard. But I wanted to be shooting by June next year. I didn’t want to let another year go by without shooting, it made no sense. So Jim, Jon Landau, Rae Sanchini, came with me for that big meeting. Jim and I were able to do a double tag team, talking about the world and the experience that Mountains would be. We found new ways for them to see it, and they agreed to investigate it further. We are not green lit, we are still budgeting and designing, and we are partners on this. I believe in my heart we are going to be making this movie in June of next year. We are budgeting the creatures and met with Spectral Motion and ILM, where Dennis Muren told me the sweetest words ever when he said, no one has ever seen monsters like this. That was truly one of the highlights of my fat life, a demigod like Muren saying that.

DNY: Is that because of the way the creatures are enhanced by Cameron's 3D?

Del Toro: Not only that. It’s hard to say without spoiling it. The way the creatures are rendered and done is going to bring forth an aspect of Lovecraft that has not been done on live action films. Part of my speech was, I’m putting all the chips I have accumulated in 20 years as a director, betting them on a single number. This is not just a movie and then move on to the next. It’s do or die time for me. Cameron does his movies like that every time and I find it surprising the way people judge success in retrospect, like, of course, I would have done that. Avatar was the largest gamble, again, so were Titanic and Terminator 2. I love that type of filmmaker, with those gigantic stainless steel balls, Alec Baldwin-style in Glengarry Glen Ross, fucking clanking together. You can’t explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success. He leaped into the void. Peter Jackson leaped into the void with The Lord or the Rings. George Lucas did with Star Wars.[...]

[Sacado de http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/toronto-qa-julias-eyes-and-biutiful-producer-guillermo-del-toro/]

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Resumen:

• La película llevaba en su cabeza mucho tiempo, pero fue su traumático abandono del proyecto del Hobbit lo que le dio el empujón final para abrazar el proyecto con toda su energía
• Mientras que en sus películas de terror siempre trata de encontrar aspectos que hagan más humano a lo que no es humano, en esta tratará de encontrar que es lo que separa a la humanidad de lo que no puede comprender (una muestra de que el guión esta yendo por el buen camino)
• El proyecto no está aceptado todavía, pero se está presupuestando todo y la cosa parece ir viento en popa, dentro de su estado de pre-producción
• Se atreve a poner una fecha para el inicio del rodaje: Junio 2011
• La película estará rodada con James Cameron como colaborador, quien aportará su tecnología 3D. Al parecer usará esta tecnología de forma extremadamente novedosa para poder mostrar elementos del horror de Lovecraft. Que el nombre de Cameron esté asociado al proyecto me parece la hostia, y una garantía de que el 3D no será un truco barato.
• Al final afirma que pondrá absolutamente todos los recursos como director que ha adquirido en los últimos 20 años y que los usará en la pélicula: "esto no es solo una película y luego paso a la siguiente. Es a todo o nada".
• Le sigue una reflexión muy interesante sobre los grandes directores de megaéxitos. Dice que es muy dificil cuantificar el éxito de proyectos como Titanic o Star Wars. Se trata de saltar al vacio, a todo o nada, de apostar absolutamente todo. El público luego no es capaz de entender este éxito en restrospectiva, porque en su momento implicó un todo o nada, algo de lo que el público no llega a darse cuenta. Es decir, que no había un plan B. Cameron lo hizo con Titanic y Avatar. Lucas con Star Wars. Jackson con El Señor de los Anillos. Y ahora Del Toro con Las Montañas de la Locura.

Guillermo del Toro confirmándolo en persona:

Guillermo del Toro talks AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, HAUNTED MANSION, and Reveals He's Developing 3 Video Games from ColliderVideos on Vimeo.