Remember “The Wolfman“? If you don’t, it’s probably best you don’t try and summon the memory and if you do, you probably want those two hours purged from your brain. Released in early 2010, Universal‘s first attempt to bring back their movie monster franchise was a disaster pretty much from the start. We won’t rehash every nitty gritty detail, but the long and short of it is, the movie started promisingly with Mark Romanek at the helm but feeling the budgetary squeeze and pressure from the suits he bailed at the last minute only to be replaced by Joe Johnston who tried to salvage a production that was going in about five directions all at the same time. The result? The hilariously terrible “The Wolfman”: a toneless, unscary thriller that didn’t know if it was a monster movie or a period drama and wound up failing at trying to be both.
So if you fail once, try again? That seems to be the thinking. Moviehole is reporting that Universal is apparently trying to reboot with a new movie that could go in front of cameras as early as this fall.
Michael Tabb has reportedly written a script that is currently being rewritten that will “share a link” to George Waggner‘s 1941 film “The Wolf Man.” A tentative title being knocked around right now is “Werewolf” and the studio will apparently be meeting with directors in the next couple of weeks, with casting to follow.
It’s not exactly out of the question that Universal would want to give it another whirl so soon after the previous film. With two more “Twilight” movies on the way, werewolves are still very much going to be in the public consciousness, not to mention that MTV is pimping their new series “Teen Wolf” very hard as well. The studio will have to work hard to distance the new film from Joe Johnston’s preceding film but with the right director and lead, they could get audiences on their side. And from a larger perspective, the studio was going to use “The Wolfman” to get the rest of their iconic lineup of monsters (Frankenstein, etc) rebooted and it’s likely they still want to go down that road, so they take another swing. But, strike it up as a rumor for now, but one to keep an eye out for.
