Guillermo del Toro sees his collaboration with James Cameron as a formidable asset for the upcoming 3D adaption of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness."

Cameron, writer-director of "Avatar," will serve as the film's producer, with Del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy") at the directing reins.

"He's a guy I completely admire," said Del Toro in an interview with MTV News. "This is a guy who, in every sense of the word, is formidable. This guy has literally gone to the depths of the ocean. He has pushed the medium. He's not the most successful filmmaker in history. He's the first and second most successful moviemaker in history."

For years del Toro has sought to create an R-rated, big-budget spectacle based on the 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.

"'Mountains of Madness' requires everything we have technologically, pushing 3D in horror in a way that is not just things coming at you, but to use it creatively in function of the genre, without the gimmicks," Del Toro explained. "The first movie I pitched to him in 1992 was 'Mountains of Madness.' We got together and he'd seen the design we had generated in a couple weeks. He was blown away by the stuff we were doing. We have a small crew of designers. Five guys. And he came in and said, 'You mean five guys in two weeks have done all this?'

"He has been very helpful with having notes on the screenplay, but the best part of working with Jim is he knows me, I know him and we had a very easy time having 'the talk.' I said, 'Push comes to shove, it's my movie.' And he said, 'It's your movie, absolutely, no problem, I'm here to support you.' He's going to be like he's always been: a tough ally. It's not like he's going to let me get away with everything. He's going to grill me every step of the way."

The Universal Pictures film will shoot in 2011, with Del Toro working from a script he wrote with Matthew Robbins ("Mimic," "Dragonslayer").