HP Lovecraft's epic tale "At the Mountains of Madness" will likely be director Guillermo del Toro's next film, according to Deadline.

Positioned for a 3D release from Universal Pictures, the film is said to unite del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy") with "Avatar" director James Cameron, who will produce the project.

Pre-production would begin in a few weeks for a summer 2011 shoot. Del Toro and Matthew Robbins ("Mimic," "Dragonslayer") co-wrote the script.

Cameron's involvement helped secure the deal with the studio, Deadline said.

For years del Toro has circled the project hoping to create a big-budget spectacle based on the famous author's Cthulhu mythos novella. The tale appeared in a 1936 edition of "Astounding Stories," and followed a Miskatonic University expedition to Antarctica that discovered both wonder and madness on a foreboding mountain range.

An R-rating is essential for the film, according to del Toro. He intends to approach the material with a seriously grim approach.

"Not because I want to do gore for gore's sake," he explained to Ain't It Cool News earlier this year, "but because it is a very adult movie, and the consequences of things are really deep and disturbing."

Del Toro recently departed a two film production of JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit." He was slated to direct the films, and had completed scripting both and finishing a significant portion of the project's design work.

However, because no production start date for "The Hobbit" was offered by MGM and Warner Bros., he decided to pursue other projects, including adaptions of "Frankenstein," "Slaughterhouse-Five" and the Disney theme park attraction, The Haunted Mansion.