What Went Wrong: The Wolfman
By Shalimar Sahota
September 22, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
During the last decade there have been a few notable films where the werewolf has made an appearance, such as Dog Soldiers, Cursed, Underworld and Universal’s own Van Helsing. Ginger Snaps is probably the best example of reinventing the werewolf mythology. The Wolfman is a plain and simple remake of a certain 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. movie. There was, however, nothing plain and simple about its production, with the film going through two directors, reshoots and release date changes.
The Wolfman had everything going for it, with an excellent cast that included Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and even Hugo Weaving and Art Malik in supporting roles. There’s Danny Elfman’s musical score, gorgeous production values, decent special effects and makeup courtesy of Rick Baker. An action packed cut trailer released four months before the film’s eventual release suggested that this was definitely going to be worth watching.
Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is a well-respected actor of the stage who receives the unfortunate news that his brother Ben (Simon Merrells) has gone missing. He heads back home to Blackmoor, where he is reunited with his estranged father, John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), who offers even more bad news. Turns out that Lawrence’s brother is dead. Lawrence later overhears that many of the villagers have suffered savage deaths. His brother’s fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) wants to get to the truth behind what happened to Ben. As Lawrence pieces the clues together, he hears of the curse of the werewolf, which causes those afflicted to turn into a ferocious beast when the moon is full. One just so happens to be shopping for victims around Blackmoor. While tracking down the creature, Lawrence is bitten, but survives. Shouldn’t have to second-guess what ends up happening to him.
Benicio Del Toro is a fan of the original film, and apparently has a collection of memorabilia related to The Wolf Man. This caught the attention of producer, and Del Toro’s manager, Rick Yorn, who put forward the suggestion of remaking the film. Soon, Del Toro and Yorn were knocking on Universal’s door with their idea. In March 2006, Universal made an announcement that a remake of The Wolfman was in the works, with the script to be written by Andrew Kevin Walker and Del Toro to star (it was his first blockbuster as a lead). Shooting was to take place in the UK. Relativity Media and producer Scott Stuber’s Stuber Productions also financed the film. Around a year later in February 2007, Mark Romanek was attached to direct, with Universal aiming for a November 2008 release. A few months later, it was pushed back to February 2009.
Romanek was heavily involved with pre-production, only to suddenly leave the film in January 2008. While the usual “creative differences” were cited, Romanek spoke to Time Out after the film was released, saying, “It wasn’t coming together where we were all wanting to make the same film. I wasn’t able to bring to it what I thought I could. It’s a big investment, and a big project, and I felt they should have a director who’s more in line with what they want.” On being a “big investment” and “big project,” the nitty gritty of it apparently comes down to a disagreement about the production budget and the shooting schedule, with Romanek feeling that with the script they had he was unable to shoot the film in just 80 days.
A month after Romanek left, Joe Johnston was hired by Universal. He had just three weeks to get comfortable before principal photography was to commence. Feeling he could shoot the film in the allotted time frame, he brought David Self in to do a rewrite on the script. However, the rewrite resulted in 17 extra pages. It didn’t matter how much Red Bull they were drinking; shooting the film in 80 days just wasn’t going to happen. The release date was then changed to April 2009 to accommodate the additional scenes.
“How do you prepare for a film when you’re hired three weeks before shooting?” said Johnston to Empire Magazine. “There’s no way you can make sure everything is working, but I just took it one day at a time…in a way, that forces you to trust your instincts.” Anthony Hopkins actually hailed Johnston as, “the best director I’ve worked with for many years.” Given the task Johnston had before him, Hopkins said, “He made it very easy for everyone, and that’s tough considering how much he’s had on his plate. He came in with little preparation and had to take on an elephant of a film, and there has not been a hair out of place.”
Just when it looked like everything was coming together, from December 2008 the film underwent six weeks of reshoots. Apparently some scenes with Del Toro in full-on Wolfman-mode just didn’t look right, because he looked a bit silly walking on two legs. So they reshot them to have him walking on all fours instead. Extra scenes were also shot, but the two main additions included an action sequence with the Wolfman rampaging across London, and an extended ending that added a bit more clarity. Johnston said the two sequences were originally removed from the script to save money, and upon watching the film without them, “it was immediately apparent why those sequences were in the story.” While Del Toro and Blunt were able to make time for the reshoots, Hopkins was unable to fly back to the UK, so had to film his scenes in the US. It’s worth noting that Hopkins’ hair appears to change midway through the movie. The film was now pushed back to November 2009.
During the summer of 2009, the film was then pushed back one final time to February 2010. According to producer Scott Stuber, this was done so that they could polish up the visual effects, though trying to avoid the release of A Christmas Carol, 2012 and Twilight: New Moon probably played a part as well.
The production budget for The Wolfman initially began at $85 million. Because of the reshoots it spiralled up to $150 million. The film opened in the US on February 12, 2010 alongside two other wide releases, Valentine’s Day and Percy Jackson. The Wolfman opened at #2 (behind Valentine’s Day) with a reasonable opening weekend of $31.4 million. It didn’t take long for the negative reviews and word-of-mouth to take their toll, for the following weekend it tumbled hard, dropping 68% and moving down to #5 with a take of $9.8 million. By the fourth week, it was out of the top ten. The film managed to accumulate just $61.9 million at the US box office. Overseas it took $77.8 million, amounting to an overall total of $139.7 million. Oh dear. As a consolation, the film deservedly won an Oscar for its make-up.
Kudos to Universal for releasing it with an R-rating, yet it was still cut upon its theatrical release. Although minor scenes of violence were removed, it was mostly story and character details that went out, scenes that Johnston wanted left in. The reason came down to reactions from screen tests, and that it took too long till Lawrence’s first transformation. Talking to Shock Till You Drop, Johnston said, “When audiences say, "Hey, it’s slow for the first 15 minutes," you have to listen to them.” In the Theatrical Version, it’s about 45 minutes till Lawrence first gets hairy. It takes about an hour to reach that point in the Extended Cut.
These days, Extended Cuts often feel like a ploy to get consumers to fork over extra cash on the DVD/Blu-Ray so that they can view worthless scenes that fail to really add anything; scenes that have often been rightfully omitted in the first place. In the case of The Wolfman, the Extended Cut is actually a better cut. It’s probably not enough to warrant an extra star, but certainly an improvement. It just makes me believe that Universal should have released the film as it was, without any tampering. It might have helped with the reviews at the time, since it is a better version.
According to Johnston talking to Time Out, “[Romanek] made a lot of the correct choices. He had set the ship off in a good direction. But I wanted to put my stamp on the film.” To some degree, this might explain the rewrites and reshoots, but also indicates that some of Romanek’s input did indeed make it into the film. Still, it’s anyone’s guess as to what his take would have been had he stayed.
I didn’t think The Wolfman was all that bad. But with Johnston brought in at the last minute, he tried to cut costs by removing scenes, which only resulted in a film that didn’t work. Reshoots ended up making the film longer, and in trying to appease audiences (and possibly the studio) it then had to be trimmed down so that it got to the action quicker. What was released theatrically was quite an unfortunate mess, something critics and audiences highlighted. Johnston at least had a chance to put it all together on DVD/Blu-ray, but the film had unfortunately already been tarnished at this point.