Earlier in the day, I typed a news post while standing up because I’d jumped out of my chair for joy. At the Mountains of Madness was finally set to go into production this summer. The record is now being corrected, and it turns out that it was false joy and pipe dreams put forth by producer Don Murphy trying to pressure an answer from Universal. That answer is no. It’s unclear why, and I’m checking with Universal for their side of the story, but the assumption seems to be that the R-rating and cost were a bit too much for them to handle. Instead, Guillermo Del Toro might move on to deliver a PG-13 big-budget piece of work called Pacific Rim that was written by Clash of the Titans writer Travis Beacham and deals with the world defending itself from alien monsters in the future. Del Toro and monsters is a good fit, and it’s set up at Legendary, but its high concept sounds eerily familiar. Like, say, Battleship. Or Battle: Los Angeles. That’s a shallow assessment, but that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.

It’s all happening. The best working director for the job of tackling a Lovecraft novel is going to roll cameras in June, meaning that At the Mountains of Madness could be in theaters as early as Winter 2012. Tom Cruise will be starring – which raises an eyebrow – but fans of the novel know that there’s an opportunity here to deliver Cruise at his Nic Cage-y best. Ron Perlman, who is contractually obligated to be in all geek properties of this kind, will be involved as well. According to io9, everything is set to go. Fingers are crossed now, and hopefully we’ll be getting some concept art soon. This is when it gets exciting. There’s no mention of how this will affect The Hobbit, which is shooting currently, but I can’t imagine they’d schedule this if it even budged the trip to Middle Earth by a single day. At the most, it sounds like Guillermo Del Toro will go directly from one to the other. Besides, I hear the Antarctic is wonderful in the summer.

Deadline Celebration reports that a new 3D stop-motion animated Pinocchio, based on the images from a Gris Grimly illustrated version of Carlo Collodi’s classic fairy tale and co-directed by Grimly and The Fantastic Mr. Fox’s Mark Gustafson, is in the works. The script was written By Del Toro and his frequent collaborator Matthew Robbins (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark), and every pain seems to have been taken by everyone involved to come up with something that is going to scare the bejesus out of your kids. When explaining why he wants to make little girls cry, Guillermo del Toro said, “There has to be darkness in any fairy tale or children’s narrative work, something the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and Walt Disney understood. We tend to call something Disney-fied, but a lot of people forget how powerfully disturbing the best animated Disney movies are, including those kids being turned into donkeys in Pinocchio. What we’re trying to do is present a Pinocchio that is more faithful to the take that Collodi wrote. That is more surreal and slightly darker than what we’ve seen before.” Okay, so read that again. People tend to forget how “powerfully disturbing” the Disney version of Pinocchio is; yet he feels that they must make something even more dark and surreal. As somebody that was completely freaked out by the concepts of donkey children and starving in the belly of a whale when I was five or so, I say hell yeah. This generation [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

One of the heartbreaking news moments of the past few months was seeing Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – the horror remake from director Troy Nixey and producer Guillermo del Toro – get pushed back into indefinite shelving land. Fortunately, according to Variety, FilmDistrict has come to the rescue in order to send the film to 2,500 screens on August 12th, complete with its R-rating. January would have been great (if only to help save the month and let audiences see the scares earlier), but August is better than never. Plus, there’s nothing like a fall release for this kind of horror flick. Rejoice!

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

As the only literate Reject, it’s my duty to find the latest, the greatest and the untouched classics that would make great source material for film adaptations. I read so you don’t have to. There is a noticeable lack of the kind of imaginative children’s movies that echo the tone and style of Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story or even The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. There are great family films out there these days, but many that set sail for the boundaries of imagination to meet fantastical characters along the way to a lesson. The Narnia movies come to mind, but they really fell flat. It’s time that we all went on another adventure together. I’m proposing that someone readies the Basset to set a course for somewhere we’ve never been before.

Last week, Dr. Cole Abaius broke down the reasons why Wonder Woman has yet to receive the big screen treatment. But what about the small screen treatment? For the last few weeks a spec script for a brand new TV series adaptation of the D.C. legend has been floating around from network to network. The script is by TV big dog David E. Kelley. Well, the wait is over because on Friday, NBC announced that it has picked up Kelley’s script after he provided the network with the potential ratings big dog Harry’s Law.

The movie world is so affected by Jon Favreau’s departure from the Iron Man franchise that there’s even speculation that some sort of BFF break-up between the director and Robert Downey Jr was to blame. That will most likely never be proven (until the tell all book comes out in three decades), but it’s clear that fans are reaching for any sort of explanation that rationalizes why the man who was at the forefront of the Marvel solo launch would choose to walk away from his creation in its adolescent phase. The reason, however, is less important than the simple fact that leaving was absolutely the right thing to do.

Tuesday night, fans of all things Scott Pilgrim were treated to not only a showing of the film at the Egyptian Theater in celebration of the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on Blu-Ray and DVD on the 9th of this month, but a fantastic Q&A session hosted by Guillermo del Toro featuring the director himself, Edgar Wright. Accompanying him were Michael Cera, and Scott Pilgrim creator Brian Lee O’Malley. Being that this was my first time in the presence of the greatness that is Guillermo del Toro, I didn’t know what to expect — but it’s very clear this is the guy I want doing pretty much every Q&A for every event from here on out — ever, including the presidential debates. Before the film began, del Toro took the time to mention the difference between effortless directing, and the talent to pull it off using porn star boners as an example. Clearly, Edgar Wright is the pornstar boner of directing in the eyes of Guillermo del Toro. Who knew? It only got better from there.

If you were forced to give up one of your senses which would it be? Hearing? Touch? Spidey? It would be devastating to lose any of them obviously, especially the sixth, but I expect the most frightening would be the loss of sight. The idea of your world going slowly and irreversibly dark is terrifying, and while some films choose to view the subject of blindness as fodder for treacly drama or humorous action (At First Sight, Blind Fury) there have been a few that embrace the horror of it all. Audrey Hepburn’s Wait Until Dark is probably the best known blind-centric thriller, but for me few films beat the little-seen Afraid Of the Dark when it comes to milking the nightmarish premise for maximum chills. But the new film produced by Guillermo Del Toro comes pretty damn close. A blind woman stumbles through her home, staring in vain into the dark corners and pockets of shadows. She can’t see, but she believes someone is there. Her fear-filled journey ends in the basement where she climbs a stool, loops a noose around her neck, and pauses to speak to the figure her imagination and terror may only be concocting. Until that fear is confirmed by the intruder who rushes forward from the dark and kicks the stool out from beneath her feet. She swings in silence as a camera’s flashbulb illuminates the room…

“I am not involved in Godzilla at all, I haven’t read it or plan to read it. Nor have I been approached to direct it.” That’s the statement director and all-around jolly guy Guillermo Del Toro gave to HitFix this morning, a day after Latino Review quite loudly exclaimed that he was in line to take a run at a new version of Godzilla. The project, based on a Travis Beacham spec script called Pacific Rim, is currently being set up at Legendary Pictures. Chances are that Del Toro showed up on a wish list somewhere, leading to a zealous scoopster moment. That, or everyone is lying to us. Which is entirely possible. Trust no one, we always say. That said, a Guillermo Del Toro Godzilla is an interesting proposition. As is a Guillermo Del Toro Hobbit movie, a Guillermo Del Toro Frankenstein movie, and even that Lovecraft adaptation At the Mountains of Madness. (Note: That last one still might happen.)

The phrase “first time director” is a frightening thing of beauty. It represents potential and promise, but it also brings the same concerns that the phrases “first time barber” and “first time brain surgeon” might. The world has been fortunate as of late with some fantastic first timers – from Duncan Jones to Neill Blomkamp – and after seeing the footage from Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark at Comic-Con, Troy Nixey has the potential to join their ranks. After speaking with him, it’s clear that he has the mind and the fan status to deliver true horror. He talks the talk. Hopefully the movie will prove that he walks the walk. I was fortunate enough to eat hotel cookies and sit down with the newcomer during the madness of Comic-Con. In full earshot of producer Guillermo del Toro cursing and laughing with child-like wonder, Nixey spoke about the tone of the film, the creation of fear with suggestion, and the reverence for the horror of the late 70s and early 80s.

Support Our Sponsor: BP – Doing absolutely anything you ask them in order to change their terrible public persona. This week, on a very special Reject Radio, Todd Gilchrist from every movie website ever stops by to relax after Comic-Con, to swap hair tips, and to lob invective at the movie releases this week. We also go head-to-head in a Segment Three Showdown that pits annoying movie characters against each other.

It seems like an obvious concept, that horror movies should be scary, but it also seems that most of the ones coming out of Hollywood these days are more interested in gore and/or special effects than in legitimate atmosphere and terror. The only exceptions I can think of recently are Paranormal Activity and Quarantine. But the former is more of an indie than a Hollywood production and the latter was a remake of the Spanish thriller Rec… Which brings us to the upcoming remake of Don’t Be Afraid Of the Dark. If that name only triggers memories of afternoons spent parked in front of the TV with Nickelodeon blaring out at you then you’ll need to prepare yourself for something a bit different. The film follows a young girl sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend (Katie Holmes) in an old Victorian-style home. Their arrival triggers something in the basement that wants a closer look at the girl. This is the feature debut of director Troy Nixey, but he has a pretty experienced pair of hands backing him up… Guillermo Del Toro is the film’s executive producer and the man who shepherded it along through production. The original film is a made-for-TV classic from 1973, and while it doesn’t hold up all that well today it still manages to find more than a few scares. Check after the jump for the creepiest trailer you’ve seen since Carrot Top’s Chairman Of the Board…

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.

As the lights and the noise went down in Hall H, the world caught its first glimpse of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. When the lights came back on, a bulk of the audience needed a moment to find a spare pair of slacks to slip into. Despite the massive disruption in the bathroom line – which included producer Guillermo del Toro claiming he’d messed himself – the footage impressed beyond measure. The remake of the 1973 made-for-tv horror classic (see right) has been on the radar for a while, but it earned a bigger spotlight with the creepy, suggestive atmosphere that evoked the kind of horror that always, always works with audiences but for some reason has fallen out of fashion by production houses. The description of the footage follows, so avoid it if you don’t like spoilers.

  The surprises are what to look forward to at Comic-Con, and Disney didn’t disappoint. After the Tron: Legacy panel invited the audience to possibly become part of the movie by making a lot of synchronized noise, moderator Patton Oswalt announced that Disney was going to reboot The Haunted Mansion to a weak smattering of applause. The announcement was followed by Guillermo del Toro striding onto the stage after being announced as the film’s director. No hobbits for him – at least not yet. The visionary plans on creating a truly frightening version of the property that will “make children scream” if you take them. So, keep that in mind if you have an unruly child in need of some scaring straight. According to del Toro, the film will focus on the Hat Box Ghost – a fixture from the original 1969 park attraction, and a figure that should make just about anyone wet themselves with fear. Oswalt summed up what everyone was feeling best: The man who created Pan’s Labyrinth has been given full reign over the ghostly mythology of a classic Disney fixture. And they won’t be returning Eddie Murphy’s phone calls.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard any movement on this, but horror and Del Toro fans should rejoice with the news that Miramax’s remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark has gotten a release date of its very own. And, unlike every superhero property out there, it’s a release that’s within the next 8 months. Mark your calendar and be ready to ring in the new year with some strange visitors that live in your basement.

Just after Guillermo Del Toro exited the director’s chair of The Hobbit, we took to the streets with our own list of 7 Directors Who Should Take Over. Among them was Peter Jackson — writer, producer and gatekeeper of all things Lord of the Rings. He is perhaps the easiest choice to take the reigns, having been on the project from day one co-writing the script with Del Toro. In fact, Jackson stepping up might be one of the only sure-fire ways to give fans what they want — a pair of actual Hobbit movies.

As I’m sure we all know by now, fan favorite director Guillermo del Toro has vacated the position as director of The Hobbit. That leaves the production with a big hole to fill. Which leaves us with plenty of room for idle speculation, guessing and (hopefully) something that seems like a logical path for the future of The Hobbit.