Wolf Man's Lament

I remember when The Wolf Man was announced as a vehicle for Benicio Del Toro, with One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek at the helm, I was excited. It had the potential to be a stylishly creepy movie. If you've seen One Hour Photo, just picture the clean, stark look of the Sav-Mart (a look also present in many of hus music videos), and then picture it being corrupted by something as uncontrollable as turning into a werewolf. In 2007, Romanek already had at least two collapsed film follow ups to Photo behind him (the Tom Hanks thriller Cold Case and the ill-fated adaptation of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces), so I was anxious to see him make a movie, especially something I could see working so well.

Predictably, creative differences led to Romanek leaving the project, and Universal, in their infinite wisdom, replaced him with Joe Johnston, director of Jurassic Park III. It's not that I think Johnston sucks as a director, it's just that he has no discernable style, he's a workman, not an artist. Clearly the studio had no idea how much of a buzz-builder Romanek really was (or how much of a buzz-killer Johnston would prove to be), but The Wolf Man pretty much dropped like a rock off of everyone's radars at that point. Even a disreputable director like Brett Ratner would have been a better choice as far as promoting the movie goes; imagine how much more you would have heard about the movie in the last year if Ratner was directing it. They premiered a teaser at Comic-Con 2008 that, as far as I know, was never officially posted online, and didn't even bother showing up at Comic-Con 2009.

CHUD is reporting that Universal has just bumped The Wolf Man to February 12th, 2010. Ho, hum. Who knows, maybe Joe Johnston will have directed a surprisingly good movie. But by that point, will anyone care?

Remake Watch 2009: An American Werewolf in London, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Bloody-Disgusting has the exclusive on John Landis' An American Werewolf in London being remade by The Weinstein Co., while The Hollywood Reporter has the information on Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

Aside from the fact that John Landis' original film is a classic, werewolves are inherently boring. They're kind of like the lame cousin of zombies that nobody talks about, and even in that sense, Hollywood totally ran the zombie train into the ground (with the 10-ton vampire caboose bringing up the rear), so a werewolf movie just sounds like the s---ty version of a boring idea. It's too bad, the exception was The Wolf Man, but then Mark Romanek quit and they replaced him with Joe Johnston, and my interest was permanently dead. Matt counters by saying they're "a good metaphor", but I don't think Hollywood has any interesting ideas for werewolves (as evidenced by their ideas for the aforementioned zombies and vampires) that would involve metaphors and s---.

As for Don't, produced by Guillermo Del Toro and probably starring Guy Pearce, I just think of the Nickelodeon show "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" and how much more I'd rather see that.

I remember recently I was in a bookstore, and someone was talking about the Three Stooges movie, and he was telling a customer he heard on the radio that Jim Carrey, Sean Penn, and Guillermo Del Toro were in it. Except he said Gallardo Del Toro, or Guerrero St. Toro, or something really stupid. Thanks, bookstore guy. Now whenever I hear Guillermo Del Toro's name, I'll always think of that. He even knew it was wrong on a subconscious level, because he was surprised the filmmakers had cast the director of Pan's Labyrinth. Of course, he meant Benicio Del Toro, who is starring in The Wolf Man, so I tied that story back around. Kinda.

It was also announced that the It's Alive remake is going direct-to-DVD via First Look Studios after WB dumped it.

Remake Watch 2009:
15 film remakes announced
4 film remakes released
2 tv remakes released
2 reboots announced
2 reboots released
1 remakes announced/released direct-to-DVD
1 TV remake

A "reboot" is defined by Remake Watch as a new attempt at a film series with new actors playing old characters (thus, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Race to Witch Mountain are excluded). Sequels to remakes (The Pink Panther 2, Halloween 2) are ignored.