Movies & TV / Columns

Do We Want Another Wolfman Movie?

May 30, 2020 | Posted by Steve Gustafson

Remember not too long ago when Universal had major plans for a Dark Universe that would combine and intersect all their classic monster movie characters into one shared cinematic universe?

Do you also remember when that plan was scuttled after their first launch, The Mummy with Tom Cruise wasn’t received as well as they thought it would be? Cruise’s Mummy grossed just $80 million in the United States and scoring poorly with critics and audiences.

I didn’t think it was that bad really.

Fast forward a little and thanks to The Invisible Man, the Dark Universe might be closer than we think. 

The Invisible Man debuted to $29 million and finished with a worldwide total of $124.5 million. Oh, and that’s off a budget of $7 million, excluding marketing and distribution expenses. 
Now word is that Universal is starting things back up with a Wolfman project that will include Ryan Gosling, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. 

Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo have delivered the script and sources say Gosling would play an anchorman who gets infected. The script has been described as having a vibe that evokes Network and Nightcrawler. No director has been attached yet. 

This would join other projects like Elizabeth Banks’ The Invisible Woman, Karyn Kusama’s Dracula, the Dracula-themed Renfield from Dexter Fletcher and Dark Army, which has Paul Feig attached.

The last Wolfman we got was back in 2010 with Benicio del Toro in the lead. It opened to negative reviews and was a bomb at the box office with a gross of $142.7 million against a production budget of $150 million. 

Again, personally I think it was judged rather harshly and wasn’t nearly as bad as people thought. 

Here we are again though. Gosling in the title role is interesting and if they keep things on the lower budget side, it could be fun. I think Universal raised expectations too high, too fast with their “shared universe” launch. I’d rather they go the grass root route and give us quality movies with quality characters to establish the universe. Not everything has to ape the Marvel method.

What do you think? Is the Dark Universe still alive?   

article topics :

Wolfman, Steve Gustafson