McAvoy or Cruise to Climb 'Mountains of Madness'?

James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro are putting together an H.P. Lovecraft movie over at Universal. It's interesting because Ron Howard, who has more or less lived at Universal for most of his career. In fact, half of his 20 films as a director have been distributed by Universal, and he's also working on his own Lovecraft movie (in which the author is essentially Sherlock Holmes)...for Universal. He's got to be chafed. Collider says that the King of the World-GdT combo pack, At the Mountains of Madness, is moving ahead briskly. Considering the film was just announced a few weeks ago, and that there was no concrete plan for it at all a few weeks before that, the fact that we're already discussing casting is a good sign for the film and a show of faith from the studio that it really wants to get this thing going. The creative element appears to like Tom Cruise for the lead role, particularly del Toro, while the studio prefers James McAvoy. Wow. What does that say about Cruise's box office fortunes? McAvoy has led exactly one-and-a-half hits in his career, Wanted and Atonement, and you can argue that he had a hell of a lot of help from two of the most recognizable leading ladies in film. Nothing against McAvoy, but he's the studio choice over Tom Cruise? That's a bit surprising. Now if you're wondering what this is all about, here's a synopsis of Lovecraft's novella:

"The story is written in first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, led by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalayas."

There is still plenty of time to make this decision and many others about the cast; At the Mountains of Madness is on Universal's 2013 calendar.