Wolf Man reminagines the classic Universal monster, thanks to Blumhouse. In this version, a man must protect himself and his family when they are being stalked, terrorized, and haunted by a deadly werewolf at night during a full moon. But as the night stretches on, the man begins to behave strangely, hinting that perhaps he is part of the problem.
This is not the first monster movie to be tackled by Director Leigh Whannell, who also wrote and directed 2020’s The Invisible Man. Whannell has had great success in the horror movie field, including having written several Insidious and Saw films. Wolf Man comes to theaters on January 17, 2025.
Related
Wolf Man Cast & Character Guide
2025’s Wolf Man reboot is led by some exciting stars. Here’s the main cast and who they’ll be playing in Leigh Whannell’s monster horror flick.
Screen Rant interviewed Leigh Whannell at New York Comic-Con to discuss his newest project. He details the evolution that the script has gone through over the years, and touches on Ryan Gosling’s departure from the film. Whannell explains his different approach to already established IPs versus original ideas, like Saw, Upgrade, and Insidious. He also reveals which Universal monster he would like to tackle next, if given the chance.
Leigh Whannell Only Had A Few Things He Told The Marketing Team Not To Reveal In The Trailer
“We want to save it for the ticket price.”
Screen Rant: Can you talk about finding the right amount of creature to show in the Wolf Man trailer?
Leigh Whannell: It’s tough because when you work for a company like Universal, it’s this massive company, as you know. It’s different departments and each department has hundreds of people in it. It’s hard to stay on top of… I’m not in there saying, okay, here’s what you can and can’t do in the trailer. Their marketing department presents me something and I can voice any objections, but it really feels like my job is to make the movie and then their job is to sell it. There’s a bit of a gap there.
But I will say that Michael Moses, who’s the head of marketing at Universal and his team, Joe Weiss, and a good friend of mine, Maria Pekarskaya, they’re really good people. I really do trust them. I’ve now officially reached the age where I just want to work with nice people. Life’s too short to be surrounded by people that are obnoxious. So what I like best about them is just how nice they are. Michael Moses is such a nice guy and he’s so smart, but he’s such a supporter. He makes you feel like he’s on your side, and he doesn’t talk to you like, I’m the marketing guy, you don’t know sh*t. He’s very inclusive and I love them.
So what I did say to them is let’s not reveal A, B and C. And one of those things obviously is the makeup and stuff. Because we want to save it for the ticket price.
Wolf Man & Saw II Had Completely Opposite Problems
“There is something nice about rolling downhill at 100 miles an hour going, we just have to hang on. Because all that momentum has its own excitement.”
Screen Rant: Can you talk about the evolution that Wolf Man went through over the years?
Leigh Whannell: Yeah, it was an interesting project. It came to me right after Invisible Man. They said, “Do you want to do Wolf Man?” And at first I was like, “I’m not sure, I just did Invisible Man.” And then I came up with an idea that I thought, “Oh, this version of the Wolf Man I would like.” And then I asked Corbett, my wife, we co-wrote it — she’s over there on her phone. I was like, “Let’s co-write something together.”
It went through this long gestation period where I was working on it for a while with Ryan Gosling, and then he had to step off. And it was during COVID, so everything was crazy. And then, just as we started getting it going again, the strikes happened. I felt like there’s a constant barrage of problems. Finally, when the strikes were ending, we got the green light from Universal. So it’s been a long time coming, but some movies just seem to happen. Some movies get forced into existence.
I remember, after finishing that first Saw movie, the producers were like, the Monday after it was released, it came out on Friday and then on Monday they called, and they said, we want a movie out next October, start writing. That was the opposite problem. That was me going, so when do you need the script by? And they were like, three weeks from now. I can tell you there is something nice about rolling downhill at 100 miles an hour going, we just have to hang on. Because all that momentum has its own excitement.
With something like Wolf Man, where it seems to be taking forever, it can kill your creative spirit. But I’m glad I had time to think about it for a long time before I shot it, because when we shot it, I found that there were so many moving parts, with make-up and a child, and we’re shooting at night, and we’re in New Zealand in a forest. If I hadn’t had thought about it for so long, I might have lost my mind. I always had that to fall back on, like, all right, I know what I’m doing here.
Leigh Whannell Appreciates That Established IPs Come With A Built-In Audience
“If you’re working on an original, you are fighting an uphill battle.”
Screen Rant: You mentioned Saw. When you are doing something original like that, versus an existing IP like Wolf Man, how does your process differ?
Leigh Whannell: That’s interesting. It’s funny because I tried to treat The Invisible Man and Wolf Man like they were originals. I wasn’t approaching it like, all right, I need to do a callback to Lon Chaney here. I was thinking, imagine this is the first time this story has been told. It’s always there in the back of my mind, but I’m really trying to make it new, whereas when I was writing Saw, you’re just creating something out of thin air. Or other original films I’ve written, like Insidious, Upgrade, there’s a freedom to that that is great, but the great thing about doing something like Wolf Man as opposed to Upgrade or Saw is when you’re writing, you know that someone’s going to care about it. There’s that pre-built-in love.
When you’re writing an original film, the question is always, is anyone going to care? But now look at Saw and Insidious. Saw and Insidious are so well known. But I’ll tell you, there was a time with both of them. There was a time with the first Saw movie. It’s such a ubiquitous pop culture thing now, but I remember James Wan and I thinking, this is never going to happen.We were about to shred the script and start on something else. Because it just never feels like it’s going to be real. And you know as well as I do now, getting people to pay attention, the attention economy today, it’s so different.
If you’re working on an original, you are fighting an uphill battle to be like, hey, look at me, before you even start. Original movies are my happy place. That’s what I’d rather be doing, just creating a world. But you are fighting that look at me battle. And then, standing in front of you is big pieces of IP like Jurassic Park, and you’re back behind them like, hey, guys. So it’s two different types of nerve wracking.
Wolf Man is like, will I upset the fans? Will I let people down? And writing an original is like, will anyone care? And it depends, which problem would you rather have? Which one would you pick?
Screen Rant: I would probably go with one that I know has a built-in audience, just to be safe.
Leigh Whannell: To be safe. I wouldn’t judge you for saying that because it’s already hard enough. At least when I was making Wolf Man, I knew it was coming out and it was going to be important to Universal because they really love their monsters. I remember working so hard on Upgrade and I loved that movie, and then when we got to the end of the process, we won Best Midnight Movie at South by Southwest. And then they looked at it, and they did their algorithm, and they said, oh, we’re going to give it a limited release. They didn’t deem it worthy.
So we ran the race and we didn’t win the distribution race. I’m happy that it ended up as this kind of cult movie. A movie without an audience is truly a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. All that effort just becomes silence. Digital silence. It’s tough.
If Universal Wants To Include Wolf Man At Halloween Horror Nights 2025, Leigh Whannell Wants To Have Extensive Conversations
“I called Jason Blum and said we have to pull the pin on this thing because people out there are going to think that’s what we’re doing. It would be like judging the Freddy Krueger makeup by a costume at Spirit Halloween.”
Screen Rant: Speaking of Universal, they have Halloween Horror Nights. Would you like to see Wolf Man be one of their houses next year?
Leigh Whannell: Well, there was a bit of a debacle this year. They did a thing where they were like, okay, we’re going to have a Wolf Man appear, and I was like, what are you going to do? They’re like, oh, he’s just going to jump out and scare people, nd I was like, does Arjen know about this, the makeup artist? Then it all just went down and I was like, we have to stop this. I called Jason Blum. I was like, we have to pull the pin on this thing because people out there are going to think that’s what we’re doing. It would be like judging the Freddy Krueger makeup by a costume at Spirit Halloween. You know what I mean? There’s a lot more to it. I’m like, no, no, no.
At that stage, once something gets on the internet, the horse is bolted. So I was like, let’s not do this because the Wolf Man is so – when people go and see a movie called Wolf Man, they’re waiting to see the creature. Let’s not [mess] this up. So if they came back to me next year and said, do you want to do it again? I’d be like, show me the wolf. Show me the wolf. Let’s talk about this extensively.
The funny thing is, if you’re in a theme park in broad daylight – the thing is the makeup itself is one component. It’s lighting. It’s how you shoot it. It’s where you position the actor. There’s so many different things that go into it. If Jeff Goldblum was to wander in here wearing the makeup from the fly under these flourescent lights, it probably wouldn’t look that great. It’s how it was photographed.
So what I get concerned about when people want to do costumes and stuff like that in theme parks is like, but what are the conditions? Because if we don’t control the lighting and everything, it’s just not going to be – at a certain point, though, I mean, it’s not yours anymore. If I’m walking through Halloween Horror Nights and I see a little jigsaw puppet, I’m like, ah, great, you know, what am I going to do? Because that puppet doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to the general public.
I just went to the 20th anniversary screening of the first Saw movie at Beyond Fest in L.A., and I forgot how hardcore the Saw fans are. I was meeting them, and they are – like even if that was the only thing I did, if that was my one thing, if I was a one-hit wonder, I’d be like, hey, I wrote Come On Eileen. I’d be the guy at the bar being like, you know that song Come On Eileen? I wrote that. Because the passion that they have, they’re so passionate about the series.
For me, it’s really about that first movie. All the sequels they made, I’m not as big of a fan of, but the people that were there that night really showed up for that first movie. So I just love it. I love meeting people that – like if you write something and people care about it and get tattoos – that could be my epitaph. I’d be happy with just that I created something that people get tattooed on their body.
Surprisingly, The Design For Wolf Man Came Easily
“There’s no notes I can give you that would [improve this].”
Screen Rant: There have been a lot of iterations of the wolf man over the years, so what was it like trying to nail down your version?
Leigh Whannell: It was tough. It was weird, because it was exactly as you said, there’s been so many versions of this. I lined up all the different versions, I had a PDF of everyone from Lon Chaney to David Norton in American Werewolf, The Howling, Dog Soldiers. I had every look in front of me, and I’m kind of staring at it, and I’m like, “All right, so where do I fit in?” You know what a big inspiration to me was, was Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker. Not so much in terms of look, but I had a photo of him on my desk as the Joker because I really love what they did there with the character.
They stayed true to what the Joker is, but they just took it [to another level]. You hadn’t seen that version of the Joker before. Not at that time. People still love it. Do you remember when they first released that image of his face with that one sheet? Social media was not as crazy in 2008 as it is now, but I remember Twitter exploded. It was like, “Is that the Joker?” I find that so inspirational what they did with that character and how they approached it. And I was thinking [about] if I can take their approach to Wolf Man, and I think I did. So that document I had with all the different photos of all the different Wolf Men, when I put my version of it, it didn’t look like any of them. And I was like, “Ooh.”
Credit doesn’t even go to me. It goes to Arjen Tuiten, the makeup artist. I found him and I said, “I want to show you a photo, but I can’t. I want to see something.” He made a model. We were talking a lot, I was telling him what I wanted, and he’s like, “I think I know what you mean. Let me go.” And he ended up making this model of the creature on the ground. He actually built, like, half of a barn, almost like something you would see out on the floor here for sale. It was like a barn with hay on the ground and there’s this creature lying there. It was like this big.
And I was just staring at it for the first time, and I was like, “That’s it. It just looked perfect.” Do you know what? I never had any notes. I was like, “That’s it, that’s what we should do.” It doesn’t [happen often]. Usually in L.A., in Hollywood, it’s like, “Can we change this?” S–t, every screenplay I’ve written has just been absolutely inundated with notes. But when I saw the maquette, the model that Arian had made, I was like, “There’s no notes I can give you that would [improve this]” – I just was like, “Just do this.”
Leigh Whannell Would Love To Try His Hand At Jekyll and Hyde
“Of all the monsters, that one used to really stay with me.”
Screen Rant: Is there another monster you would like to tackle next?
Leigh Whannell:
I’ve always thought Jekyll and Hyde. That book, when I was a kid, really creeped me out, the concept of it. Of all the monsters, that one used to really stay with me. There’s something about the hero and the villain being the same person. I think it would be a really good modern version of Jekyll and Hyde. I don’t know exactly what it would be.
More About Wolf Man (2025)
From Blumhouse and visionary writer-director Leigh Whannell, the creators of the chilling modern monster tale The Invisible Man, comes a terrifying new lupine nightmare: Wolf Man.
Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott (Poor Things, It Comes at Night) stars as Blake, a San Francisco husband and father, who inherits his remote childhood home in rural Oregon after his own father vanishes and is presumed dead. With his marriage to his high-powered wife, Charlotte (Emmy winner Julia Garner; Ozark, Inventing Anna), fraying, Blake persuades Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit the property with their young daughter, Ginger (Matlida Firth; Hullraisers, Coma).
But as the family approaches the farmhouse in the dead of night, they’re attacked by an unseen animal and, in a desperate escape, barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. As the night stretches on, however, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable, and Charlotte will be forced to decide whether the terror within their house is more lethal than the danger without.
Check out our other NYCC 2024 interviews here:
Wolf Man
comes to theaters on January 17, 2025.
Source: Screen Rant Plus
Wolfman is a reboot of the classic Universal Monsters movie The Wolfman. Christopher Abbott stars in the lead role and is helmed by The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell. The film follows the same premise as the original and the 2010 reboot, focusing on a man who becomes a werewolf after falling victim to an ancient curse.
- Director
- Leigh Whannell
- Release Date
- January 17, 2025
- Studio(s)
- Blumhouse Productions
- Distributor(s)
- Universal Pictures
- Writers
- Leigh Whannell , Corbett Tuck , Lauren Schuker Blum , Rebecca Angelo
- Cast
- Christopher Abbott , Julia Garner , Matilda Firth , Sam Jaeger , Benedict Hardie
