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Guillermo Del Toro has had one of the fuller cinematic plates for a while now with several projects circling his director’s chair at any given time. He was attached to direct the Hobbit films, but MGM’s financial woes have put the temporary kibosh on the project and forced Del Toro to move on to something new. His to-do list includes reboot/remakes of Frankenstein, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, adaptations of David Moody’s Hater and Dan Simmons’ Drood, and probably even an original work or three. But his dream project for quite some time has been an adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. The tale follows an expedition to the Antarctic that discovers the remains of an other-worldly civilization of monsters, gods, and monster gods.

And now thanks to Universal and James Cameron it looks like Del Toro’s dreams are about to come true. Per Deadline Cheboygan, Del Toro goes into pre-production in a few short weeks and will begin to shoot the film next summer. Not surprisingly, the film will apparently be filmed in 3D as well. The cherubic and eternally smiling director has said in the past that studios wouldn’t touch the property due to the necessity of it being both r-rated and a period piece, but it seems that Cameron’s name on the project has apparently helped Universal move past those sticking points and agree to a budget Del Toro estimates to be around $130 million.

There haven’t been many films made of Lovecraft’s work, and those that were have gone the direct-to-DVD route. The closest we’ve gotten to a Lovecraftian film on the big screen is John Carpenter’s excellent In the Mouth Of Madness, so it will be interesting to finally see one hit theaters with a substantial budget behind it. This is definitely more exciting than anything else on Del Toro’s schedule (aside from maybe Drood), so expect to be hearing much more about it as production ramps up next year.