Home Entertainment The Invisible Man’s Leigh Whannell in talks to direct The Wolfman

The Invisible Man’s Leigh Whannell in talks to direct The Wolfman

2 min read
1

After giving Blumhouse one of its biggest box office and critical hits with a clever new take on Universal’s The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell is apparently the go-to guy for the studio. Following a recent announcement that Universal is turning to Blumhouse again to reboot another of its classic movie monsters – this time seeing Ryan Gosling star as the hirsute Wolfman – it’s being reported that Whanell is in talks to direct this horror project as well.

Universal previously had big plans for their monster-centric Dark Universe, but those were all jettisoned when the Tom Cruise-led The Mummy tanked at the box office. The studio revised all plans for a shared universe and decided to focus on standalone films instead. When they gave the reigns over to Blumhouse to do an inventive take on The Invisible Man that ended up grossing over $120 million globally on a fairly tight budget. It appears the secret to box office success is not just expensive visual effects and a big star, but a clever script and a good story instead. Shocker, right?

We don’t know exactly if there is a new and inventive script for this take on The Wolfman just yet. At the time of its initial announcement, it was said that Gosling came up with the idea himself and it was inspired by Jake Gyllenhall’s Nightcrawler… which makes very little sense as that is a movie about an unhinged newshound. Deadline and Variety are reporting that Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo are turning Gosling’s idea into a script, but /Film indicates that Whannell may also be writing a different treatment based on his own idea. The filmmaker has a first-look deal in place with Blumhouse, and this may be part of that, but it’s unclear which script will eventually be used.

Whannell has had a lot of success in the horror genre even before his latest effort with The Invisible Man, having co-created The Saw and Insidious franchises for Blumhouse. He also gave us the brilliant and brutal sci-fi thriller Upgrade, also via Blumhouse. Having him take charge of this film gives me hope that The Wolfman will properly build on its horror roots and not try and be a big box office spectacle. Just look at the 2010 take on The Wolfman, to see that bigger isn’t always better.

Last Updated: July 9, 2020

One Comment

  1. Son of Potassium

    July 9, 2020 at 22:13

    It’s amazing they’ve not started gender swapping the monster universe yet, oh damn, did I just give them ideas?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

The Forever Purge trailer imagines a world where everyone keeps on purgin’

This year, there are no more rules as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual …