In the case of the Common Monsters, The Wolfman is exclusive. In contrast to Dracula and Frankenstein, who originated in literature, The Wolfman and his alter ego, Lawrence Talbot, are unique characters Common Footage owns based mostly on werewolf lore. 1941’s The Wolf Man won’t be Common Footage’ first werewolf film (that may be 1935’s Werewolf in Paris), but it surely actually is an iconic piece of horror cinema. Lon Channey Jr.’s everyman portrayal makes the character probably the most tragic Common Monster. The make-up by Jack Pierce is iconic, and the film itself outlined the werewolf in fashionable tradition for generations to return. Its affect might be seen in almost each werewolf film since. 2025 sees Leigh Whannell deliver the monster to the massive display as soon as once more in Wolf Man, hoping to offer the character the identical therapy he gave The Invisible Man.
But, this isn’t the primary Wolf Man remake. The primary big-budget try by Common Footage to reboot the basic monster in a standalone film (so Van Helsing would not depend) was a notably troubled manufacturing that grew to become one of many studio’s largest flops. The Wolfman starred Academy Award winners Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, future Academy Award nominee Emily Blunt, and fan-favorite Hugo Weaving in a big-budget gothic horror remake that confronted quite a few challenges behind the scenes. Right here is the troubled manufacturing of The Wolfman and the way it all went very flawed.
A Dangerous Moon Rising
- Launch Date
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February 10, 2010
- Runtime
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125 minutes
Common Footage introduced a remake of The Wolf Man, eliminating the area and calling it The Wolfman, in March 2006 with Benicio Del Toro within the lead position, because the actor was an enormous fan of the unique 1941 movie. The choice to remake The Wolfman got here after 2004’s Van Helsing, which was disappointing on the field workplace and didn’t relaunch the Common Monsters like The Mummy had again in 1999.
Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote the screenplay for Se7en and likewise the field workplace gothic interval horror movie Sleepy Hole, was introduced on to pen the script. Mark Romanek, greatest identified for the underrated thriller One Hour Picture, signed on to direct The Wolfman in February 2007 with a deliberate launch date of November 14, 2008, the primary of many launch dates for the movie. Romanek was a choose that puzzled individuals, however in line with the director, he and Benicio Del Toro wished to “infuse a stability of cinema in a popcorn film” in an interview with Collider in 2013. Romanek would depart the challenge 11 months later, in January 2008, because of artistic variations between himself and the studio.
As a substitute of pushing again the manufacturing begin date, Common Footage rushed to discover a alternative director to fulfill their deliberate launch date, which ultimately could be for nothing, because the movie could be delayed a number of instances anyway to account for a lot of reshoots that may later comply with. The studio thought-about Invoice Condon, whereas Martin Campbell (On line casino Royale) was . The studio approached Brett Ratner (X-Males: The Final Stand), James Mangold (Stroll the Line), and Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III) to direct, with Jonhston being employed on February 3, 2008, only one month earlier than cameras have been set to start out rolling.
This gave Johnson little time to place his personal spin on the film, utilizing most of the belongings that Romanek had developed. David Self (Street to Perdition) was employed to do a fast rewrite, and filming started on March 3, 2008. In the midst of filming, Common Footage introduced the movie could be delayed till February 13, 2009, on Friday the thirteenth, which might be preferrred for a horror film. A lot in order that the Friday the thirteenth reboot would declare that launch date. No person anticipated The Wolfman to tackle Jason Voorhees on his day, and the movie then moved to April 3, 2009. This was the third launch date for the movie, however not the final.
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The All Necessary Make-Up Transformation
When information of a remake of The Wolfman emerged, it appeared like a no brainer that Rick Baker could be approached to do the design. Baker received the inaugural Academy Award for Finest Make-up for his work on 1981’s American Werewolf in London, a werewolf design and transformation so groundbreaking that they made an Oscar class to acknowledge it. Since then, Baker has been THE werewolf man in Hollywood, having designed werewolves for the TV present Werewolf, Wolf, and Cursed. Baker was an enormous fan of the unique 1941 movie because it and 1931’s Frankenstein impressed him to get into make-up. He pursued the challenge, and Common Footage shortly grabbed him.
Baker labored intently with Del Toro to design the Wolfman’s look. Regardless of Romanek going by many various designs for the title creature, Baker and Del Toro have been insistent on the Wolfman resembling the make-up created by Jack Pierce for the 1941 movie. With Johnson approaching board three weeks earlier than filming started, he did not have time to develop or plan out the make-up transformation for the Wolfman, so the choice was made to make use of CGI for the transformation, which drastically upset Baker.
In 2008, MovieWeb interviewed Rick Baker. Whereas Baker did say on the time, “I am actually proud of the best way it turned out. It is very old-school and gothic horror film,” he additionally let his frustration about a number of the films behind the scene’s improvement be identified, saying he had no real interest in directing as a result of he had seen established filmmakers wouldn’t have management over their films, seemingly hinting at The Wolfman when he mentioned “They’re filmed by committee, directed by committee. That is the explanation I had hundreds of designs is as a result of I had a military of producers who had strategies and stuff.”
Regardless of Baker’s frustration, and The Wolfman being doomed for field workplace catastrophe, the film would develop into an Academy Award-winning movie. The Wolfman received Finest Make-up on the 83rd Academy Awards, awarded to Baker and make-up supervisor Dave Elsey. Baker’s Oscar acceptance speech was quick, solely thanking his spouse. Just some months after the Oscar, Baker expressed how little of his work confirmed up on display and instructed IndieWire, “The entire transformation was carried out on computer systems, but it surely was based mostly rather a lot on concepts I had and sculptures that I did, however I used to be form of pushed out of that, and I’m nonetheless form of stinging about it.”
A Troubled Rating
The make-up wasn’t the one troubled side of The Wolfman. Danny Elfman was employed because the movie’s composer, with Johnson wanting a moody, atmospheric, and darkish sound. Given Elfman’s extremely gothic rating for Sleepy Hole, he appeared like the proper choose. Nevertheless, Common Footage rejected Elfman’s rating after half-hour had been lower from the movie. Elfman was unable to return to compose the film as he was already engaged on Alice in Wonderland for Tim Burton. The producers then determined to take the rating in a distinct course.
Impressed by a lower of the trailer that was set to extra digital songs, Common Footage wished a fast-paced digital rating that may quicken the tempo, making the story really feel extra thrilling. This additionally required reshoots for some scenes to match this new tempo. They ended up bringing in Underworld composer Paul Haslinger to rescore the film. Nevertheless, in January 2010, only one month earlier than The Wolfman‘s theatrical launch, Haslinger’s rating was thrown out, and the unique rating that Danny Elfman had composed was put again into the film with a group of composers delivered to reshape Elfman’s unique work for the brand new lower of the film.
As well as, the unique editor was fired from the film and changed by trade legends Dennis Virkler and Walter Murch. Virkler famously earned an Academy Award nomination for 1993’s The Fugitive, a film with a troubled manufacturing and a brief turnaround window between principal images and the discharge date. Murch was identified for his work on Francis Ford Coppola movies like The Godfather trilogy, The Dialog, and Apocalypse Now. But this backwards and forwards between a moody rating to an digital rating, three totally different editors, and two administrators confirmed an underlying challenge behind the remake: no person knew exactly what they wished the film to be.
‘The Wolfman’ Lastly Hits Theaters
The Wolfman grossed $31 million over the three-day weekend at quantity 2 on the field workplace behind the romantic comedy Valentine’s Day. On account of it being Presidents’ Day weekend, it grossed $35 million over the four-day weekend however dropped to quantity 3, being overtaken by Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. $35 million is a decent opening for a horror film, and had The Wolfman‘s unique funds of $85 million been stored in place, it will have been seen as a stable opening that had an opportunity of constructing its funds again on the field workplace and thru dwelling video leases and DVD gross sales.
Nevertheless, the six weeks of reshoots, paying two separate composers for scores with one being scrapped totally, ballooned the film funds to $150 million. This made it the most costly horror film on the time of its launch and presently the second behind solely World Battle Z, one other film that underwent important reshoots. The Wolfman performed in theaters for seven weeks and grossed $61 million domestically and $139 million worldwide, under its funds.
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The Wolfman additionally didn’t wow critics, with a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes based mostly on 220 opinions. The New York Instances’ A.O. Scott mentioned, “The title character in The Wolfman suffers from a vexing identification disaster, and so does the film.” Jen Yamato, who’s a recipient of the 2024 ICG Publicists Press Award, mentioned in her opinions for Films.com (now Fandango) that “Rather than official stress and suspense, The Wolfman options extra low-cost bounce scares and loud scary noises than each J-horror movie ever made put collectively.” Essentially the most brutal might need come from Ed Gonzalez at Slant Journal, saying, “Would that Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman have been spectacularly terrible, then it will have been at the very least a enjoyable time on the films.”
The Legacy of ‘The Wolfman’
The field workplace failure of The Wolfman had ripple results that many won’t have realized. With The Wolfman flopping at Common Footage, the studio acquired chilly ft on one other $100 million plus R-rated interval horror movie they have been creating and canceled the Guillermo del Toro-directed and James Cameron-produced At the Mountain of Insanity. In the meantime, Common Footage’ pivoted on their try and reboot their basic monsters by drawing extra from superhero movies than horror films. 2014’s Dracula Untold tried to go along with the Batman Begins model origin, and 2017’s The Mummy was trying to be the subsequent Iron Man or Man of Metal and launch a shared universe referred to as The Darkish Universe.
Over time, The Wolfman has gained one thing of a cult following, partially as a result of gothic manufacturing design that stands other than most trendy horror movies that favor modern settings and likewise the unimaginable make-up design of The Wolfman, offering the proper mix of paying homage to the unique whereas updating it for a brand new period. Some appraisal got here when the film was launched on dwelling video and featured the “Unrated Administrators Reduce,” which included 17 minutes of further footage, together with Max von Sydow’s scene that was lower from the film.
One yr after The Wolfman was launched, Common Studios President Ronald Meyer oversaw movie manufacturing and referred to as the film “One of many worst films we ever made. […] The script by no means acquired proper … The director was flawed. Benicio [del Toro] stunk. All of it stunk” when chatting with The Guardian. This quote actually feels hypocritical, as he throws the artistic group beneath the bus and takes little to no accountability himself because the studio head who rushed the manufacturing alongside after the unique director left, which resulted in reshoots that doubtless wouldn’t have been needed in the event that they did not need to rush manufacturing. He conveniently forgot to say the studio demanding an digital rating to repeat Underworld, solely to return to the initially deliberate rating the director had in thoughts.
Regardless of what Meyer thinks, The Wolfman has discovered an viewers over time. It won’t be excellent, however it’s a remake that, just like the title monster, has a layer of tragedy and wonder that some have discovered to be misunderstood.