Leigh Whannell, director of the upcoming Wolf Man, has spoken to NME about an online backlash that followed an alleged ‘reveal’ of the creature’s appearance.
Blumhouse Productions’ loose remake of the 1941 Universal Studios horror classic The Wolf Man is not due until January and trailers have not revealed the werewolf’s full appearance. However, in September, Orlando’s Universal Theme Park Florida hosted a Halloween Horror Night that featured a photo opportunity with branding for the new movie.
This included an actor, apparently intended to portray the Wolf Man, with outlandish makeup, white hair and torn clothes. Fans were quick to mock the ‘reveal’ on X, casting doubt on the film itself. “That’s not The Wolf Man,” wrote one user. “That’s your insane grandpa who transformed into a werewolf and broke out of the retirement home.”
Another commented: “Oof, that doesn’t look good… more so just the design, if that’s what it’s going to look like in the movie then I’m officially worried about the movie now.” In October, Whannell reassured fans at New York Comic Con that this was no reflection on the actual film, while the Wolf Man branding was quietly removed from the theme park.
The Wolf Man from the upcoming Blumhouse film has made his HHN debut! #HHN33 #HHN pic.twitter.com/ifIkz7giFJ
— HHNSpeculationMatt (@SpeculationMatt) September 4, 2024
In a new interview with NME, the director reflected on the apparent gaffe. “The marketing department for a movie is so huge,” he said, “it’s really impossible to keep tabs on every single thing. So when something comes out that maybe the internet decides they don’t like, the only thing I can think is: ‘Well, you haven’t seen the finished movie, and I know what we did.’
“I’m working with Arjen Tuiten, who’s one of the world’s best make-up artists. He’s a genius. He belongs in a Hall of Fame, as far as I’m concerned, with Rick Baker [the effects artist who worked on 1981’s An American Werewolf In London] and Stan Winston [1982’s The Thing]. So there’s some solace to be taken from that. It’s almost like you have a hidden secret.”
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He added: “It’s almost better, in the internet age, to be an underdog. It’s almost better to have people being like, ‘Well, I don’t know about this,’ and then they get blown away, than it is to have everyone over-hyped and then what they get is not what they were hoping for.”
Asked how similar the film’s actual Wolf Man was to the theme park character, Whannell laughed and replied: “Very different. Without spoiling anything, what we’ve done, I just stand behind it. I’m so proud of the makeup in this film and the [Wolf Man’s] transformation.”
“We’ve actually made a film with a slow-motion transformation. I guess when people think of Wolf Man movies, what they’re used to is the full moon comes out and there’s a big scene and there’s been a lot of great versions of that.
“If you think of Rick Baker’s work in An American Werewolf In London, that’s arguably the greatest practical effects sequence of all time. I knew I didn’t wanna compete with [that], so we slowed the transformation down. It’s much more something along the lines of [1986’s] The Fly.”
Whannell, who teased shocking, “pretty gnarly” moments of body horror inspired by the likes of The Fly and The Thing, also reflected on the trend for negative reactions to a film’s first trailer. Recently, for example, fans eviscerated a trailer for the forthcoming Snow White remake.
Reactions to the first Wolf Man teaser, released in September, were generally positive, though there were – perhaps inevitably – some criticisms, which were epitomised by a blog post entitled: “We’re very worried about the new Wolf Man.”
Asked if fans should give filmmakers the benefit of the doubt or if this is simply the new normal, Whannell replied: “I think it boils down to what you just said. Like so many things involving the internet, it’s just where we’re at.
“I could be envious of filmmakers from the 1980s: when they put something out into the world, unless someone wrote you a letter or to your agent, you weren’t immediately hearing from everybody. We are making art in a different time.
“I do think there’s a kind of amnesia that happens sometimes. A trailer will come out and people will slam it and say: ‘This looks terrible.’ And then the movie comes out and it’s actually good! Suddenly there’s this reversal, a sudden amnesia – almost like: ‘Well, I was always onboard!’ The internet is quick to judge but also quick to forget, and to reverse course.”
“In the case of Wolf Man [trailer], I was really into it but it’s pretty impossible these days to please everybody, so there’s nothing you can really do.”
In addition to shaking off criticism, Whannell teased a powerful central performance from Christopher Abbott, who plays family man Blake and his hirsute alter-ego. The atmosphere on set, the director explained, was jovial until Abbott entered in costume after six hours in the makeup chair: “There was a hush that fell over everyone – almost like everyone was afraid of how he looked. Imagine standing there, you’re at work and someone comes in looking completely different. They don’t look like themselves, they’re not acting like themselves. How do you react?
“That was definitely something that put everybody in a tense state, almost as if we’re dealing with an actual animal here.”
Wolf Man, also starring Julia Garner, is Whannell’s first film since 2020’s acclaimed The Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss. Distributed by Universal Studios, it’s due for release in the UK on January 17, 2025.