Today’s Hollywood Moral: If at first you don’t succeed, try another reboot.
Last year’s big budget remake of The Wolfman didn’t exactly wow critics or box office attendees. In spite of this, Universal isn’t going to let the franchise die. The studio’s reportedly going to just try another reboot that will hopefully do better.
As MovieBob eloquently explained in his review, The Wolfman had a fairly troubled production, and the end result was a film that was mediocre at best and schizophrenic at worst. According to Moviehole, though, Universal doesn’t want to make a sequel to the movie because it feels another reboot would have a better chance at success:
The Universal project is currently undergoing a rewrite; it is likely headed before the cameras in the Fall. The studio is said to be talking to prospective directors over the next couple of weeks. Casting will begin shortly thereafter.
Universal owns the rights to all the classic black-and-white monsters of Hollywood, including The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Unfortunately, these franchises aren’t really going anywhere right now (the last time any of these characters really did well at the movies was in the 1990s, with Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the first Mummy).
Reportedly, the new movie’s title may involve “werewolf”; additionally, the new reboot might “share a link to the original George Waggner film (from 1941) rather than Joe Johnston’s ill-fated 2009 remake.”
Of course, this is all hearsay right now and things could change before anything official is announced. Hopefully, if this movie happens, it’ll have less interference from producers than Johnston’s production did.
