If anyone could make a movie out of At the Mountains of Madness—the master work of horror and science-fiction author H.P. Lovecraft—it's Guillermo del Toro, the writer/director behind imaginative groundbreaking films like Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth.

At the Mountains of Madness has been a long-simmering passion project for the filmmaker, and his plans for the movie almost found a green light at Universal Pictures. While the film, about scientists who discover ancient, terrifyingly powerful entities in Antarctica, had some similarities to Prometheus, that's not what killed the project.

Despite interest from Tom Cruise and James Cameron producing, Universal balked at spending $150 million on an R-rated movie that teenagers wouldn't be able to see (and help earn back its budget). The director took the blame, saying he "should have lied" to executives and told them that At the Mountains of Madness would be PG-13 to secure funding.