Earlier we commented on the weirdly “Wolf Man”-free poster for Universal’s upcoming big budget monster movie “Wolf Man” (though a new one has been released, see here, but kinda meh). Now, after a series of setbacks and production troubles, which began with the firing of original director, visionary music video maven Mark Romanek a couple of weeks before shooting began, “Wolfman” is now replacing a key crewmember — former Oingo Boingo member and current high profile Hollywood composer Danny Elfman.
According to a report on Cinemusic.net, Elfman had written an entire score for the new horror movie, along the lines of Wojciech Kilar’s moody work on Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Cinemusic cites the constantly shifting release date as a reason that Elfman couldn’t stick around and finish out his work.
Now, just a few months before the film’s February 12th, 2010 release date Elfman has been replaced by Paul Haslinger (Cinemusic misspells his name, which is pretty funny). Haslinger, oddly enough, was also a member of an influential 1980’s band — Tangerine Dream. Tangerine Dream composed a number of high profile soundtracks back in the day, including William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer,” Michael Mann’s “Thief,” Ridley Scott’s “Legend” and Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark.”
It’s just that his solo compositions have been lousy. This is the guy responsible for the utterly forgettable scores for the “Underworld” movies, the “Death Race” remake, Clive Owen’s abysmal “Shoot ‘Em Up,” and “Hostel” rip-off movie “Turistas.”
Consider this the silver bullet into our once quite lively enthusiasm for the once, errr semi-promising “The Wolfman.” While there’s speculation that we might finally hear Elfman’s score through his recent publication deal through (wait for it) Universal, who knows how real a possibility that is. What we do know is that, instead of some lushly atmospheric gothic sounds, this ‘Wolfman’ might be prowling around Victorian London to aggro- rocktronica. Sounds monstrous. — Drew Taylor