Guillermo Del Toro on Pacific Rim Monsters and the Demise of At the Mountains of Madness

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Or, rather: First came the agony -- the surprise shut-down of production on his ambitious At the Mountains of Madness -- but now filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is having a ball prepping his next directorial effort, the futuristic alien invasion action movie Pacific Rim. He spoke with Movieline about the two projects while making the press rounds for Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

"At the Mountains... it's tragic what happened," del Toro recalled. He and screenwriter Matthew Robbins, his co-writer on Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, had tried to get the film off the ground for years, and he'd been working closely with would-be star Tom Cruise to start production on the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation earlier this year. "We were very close to it. We were doing the movie together, Tom and I, and we loved the screenplay passionately."

"I worked with Tom for a long, long time -- many, many months. We were very close in the partnership in creating it, and when it collapsed, it collapsed four days before we opened offices in Toronto. So it was a big surprise. But you know what? I think it's either going to happen one day in the right way, or I really think the worst thing that can happen to a movie like that is for it to get filmed the wrong way. There are two ways of preserving the greatness of a movie: Making it, or not making it. But what you cannot do is make it the wrong way because you needed to make it, that's silly."

Del Toro's currently in prep for Pacific Rim, which begins filming in November for a just-announced release date of July 12, 2013. He's called the kaiju-inspired alien invasion film "the biggest film I've ever done by about twice," with creatures so big they can't be created practically.

"It's almost too much fun. The thing I love most in the world is monsters, and we are creating great monsters. We are literally in the paradise field, the Elysium field, of monsters right now. And we've barely started. We have still many months to create the monsters and we're making sure we create and deliver the finest monsters fit to be created onscreen."

Stay tuned for the full Movieline Interview with Guillermo del Toro and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark star Katie Holmes.