Despite being the perfect match between director and material, everything heard up to this point about Guillermo Del Toro's attempt to adapt H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness has been scuttlebutt. Though there is a certifiable genius at the helm and James Cameron producing, Universal has been hesitant to give the project a proper budget, fearing that the material wouldn't attract a large enough audience. As a result, fans have been twiddling their thumbs since last July, waiting for the project to finally get the green light. It looks like that day has arrived.

io9 recently spoke with producer Don Murphy who confirmed not only that At The Mountains of Madness is a go, but that it will start filming in June and that Tom Cruise is set to star. Rumors regarding Cruise's involvement go back to September and were confirmed last month when Cameron said that the actor was still interested in the lead. Murphy also added that the script is "very close" to the source material, meaning Lovecraftian purists need not worry. Set in Antarctica, the film is about a group of explorers who discover a group of aliens known as the Elder Things that are buried under the snow and ice. When they are awakened, however, all hell breaks loose.

For a while it looked as though this could have been a project along the lines of Ghostbusters 3 and Arrested Development, in the sense that people would talk about it for ages and it would simply never get made. While I would hate to jinx it, it does seem like we are closer than ever to finally seeing H.P. Lovecraft through the eyes of Guillermo Del Toro, and I for one couldn't be more excited.