Sigh.

Since 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Guillermo del Toro has been attached to direct some truly exciting movies. Unfortunately for we the fans, the Hollywood machine is a fickle beast and now two of said exciting projects have perished, and we’re hearing about the third movie that del Toro will be directing “next.”

It started with The Hobbit, which del Toro was attached to helm for a long while before constant delays forced him to walk away from the two-part movie. Next up was the thrilling announcement that he would instead be taking on At the Mountains of Madness, an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story that Guillermo had been dreaming about making. With James Cameron by his side it appeared that this one would be a surefire success, but alas, after whispers of trouble on the horizon, we now know that Universal Pictures has decided not to back the passion project.

So why exactly did this ambitious project fail and what will del Toro do next? Keep on reading to find out!

Before we get into why At the Mountains of Madness failed, let’s look at the future. Apparently del Toro will now be directing a movie called Pacific Rim, which is said to be a monster movie hovering over an expected PG-13 rating. Apart from that not much else is known.

Deadline recently had a chat with the director to clear the air on what went wrong with Universal and At the Mountains of Madness. The chat was lengthy and you can head over to their site to read it in-full, but basically, del Toro isn’t quite sure what happened either.

It’s said that months were spent developing the movie, locations were scouted, and much negotiating was done to meet the budget Universal set. The studio was also supposedly “blown away” by the visual presentation that del Toro and his team came up with. This only really leaves the fact that the director refused to give in on the rating, but if a budget was firmly set it has to be assumed they had come to accept the possible R. But for one reason or another, after all that work, Universal decided to pass the movie up. This is what has many thinking Comcast’s acquisition of the company from General Electric may be playing a role in the unexpected turn of events.

The hope now is that Universal will allow them to find a new home for the project, but as del Toro will tell you, this could be a long and difficult process to pull off. For now, we’ll just have to wait to see this epic Lovecraft tale brought to life.