Ryan Gosling will be the latest in the proud line of men-who-turn-into-wolves in Universal’s new take on Wolfman.
Universal is hoping to catch lightning in a bottle again with another classic monster makeover, in the wake of the recent success of The Invisible Man, according to Variety.
Gosling reportedly pitched the movie idea to Universal and his storyline apparently meshed with what the studio had in mind. The search for a director for the vehicle is underway as of this writing, with Cory Finley (Bad Education) a strong contender, according to reports.
No clear cut plot details have been revealed yet, but the screenplay–handled by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo–reportedly will “be set in present times and in the vein of Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler, with an obvious supernatural twist”.
Universal had planned to create a “Monsterverse”–an interconnected monster movie scenario–starting with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy in 2017, but that film did not do well with critics or moviegoers. Now, it seems the studio is concentrating on standalone monster films with strong stories and more modest budgets.
Fans of the werewolf genre probably know that Universal started the whole man-to-wolf mania back in 1935 with Werewolf of London (directed by Stuart Walker and starring Henry Hull) and continued it (most famously) with 1941’s The Wolf Man (directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney Jr. in the role he made his own).
Most recently, Benicio del Toro donned the hairy mantle in Joe Johnston’s 2010 The Wolfman, but this incarnation did poorly at the box office, grossing just $143 million on a budget of $150 million. The film did, however, earn an Academy Award for Best Makeup that year. Small consolation that.
Keep reading Horror News Network for updates on the search for a director and any further details on this new Universal foray into horror history.
Click here for more on the Universal Monsters franchise.
