"Avatar" writer-director James Cameron recently spoke about his motivation for joining Guillermo del Toro's upcoming 3-D adaption of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness."

Cameron is serving as the film's producer, with Del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy") at the directing reins. They are currently pre-producing the film for Universal Pictures. Del Toro's involvement was Cameron's key incentive for signing aboard the ambitious adaption.

"We've been friends for twenty years," Cameron explained in an interview with FEARnet. "We've been trying to work together, really, for that entire time. And it has never quite congealed. We're both Lovecraft fans. … And if anybody can bring Lovecraft to the screen it's gonna be Del Toro."

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.

"He's got a real vision for the film," Cameron said. "It's very, very well-developed in his mind. You know, I'm just there to facilitate his vision. I don't have any strong sense of authorship; zero sense of authorship. I'm just there to try to get it made and help him do the movie that's in his head."

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

See more of Cameron's interview at FEARnet.