Wolf Man (2025)

This page is similar in name or subject to other pages.

See also Wolf Man for a complete list of references to clarify differences between these closely named or closely related articles.

Wolf Man

Credits
Title:	Wolf Man
Director:	Leigh Whannell
Writers:	Leigh Whannell; Corbett Tuck
Producers:	Leigh Whannell; Jason Blum; Beatriz Sequeira; Melanie Turner; Ryan Gosling; Ken Kao; Jon Romano; Jennifer Scudder Trent; Helena Hawkes; Axel Paton
Composer:	Benjamin Wallfisch
Cinematography:	Stefan Duscio
Editors:	Andy Canny
Production
Production company:	Universal Pictures Blumhouse Productions Cloak & Co. New Zealand Film Commission
Distributed by:	Universal Pictures
Released:	January 17th, 2025
Rating:	R
Running time:	103 min.
Country:	USA
Language:	English
Navigation
Previous:	—
Next:	—

Wolf Man is an American feature film of the werewolf fiction subgenre of horror. It is a reboot of the 1941 film The Wolf Man by Universal Pictures, which is part of the greater "Universal Monsters" brand. It was directed by Leigh Whannell with a script written by Whannell and Corbett Tuck. It was produced by Blumhouse Productions and Cloak & Co. in association with the New Zealand Film Commission. It was distributed through Universal Pictures. It was released internationally on January 15th, 2025 with its U.S. premiere taking place on January 17th.

Plot[]

Cast[]

Actor	Role
Christopher Abbott	Blake Lovell
Julia Garner	Charlotte Lovell
Matilda Firth	Ginger Lovell
Sam Jaeger	Grady Lovell
Ben Prendergast	Grady wolf
Zac Chandler	Young Blake
Benedict Hardie	Derek
Milo Cawthorne	Man
Leigh Whannell	Dan voice

Notes & Trivia[]

This movie is a reboot of the 1941 film The Wolf Man by Universal Pictures, which is part of the greater "Universal Monsters" brand. It was directed by George Waggner. That film was remade in 2010 as The Wolfman by director Joe Johnston.
The tagline for this film is "What if someone you love became something else?"
Promotional material for this film also uses the stylized title Wolfman.
There are a total of nine credited cast members in this film.
Filming on Wolf Man began in March, 2024. This movie was shot in Mangaroa in Upper Hutt and Wellington, New Zealand. Wellington is also the central setting for the horror/comedy series Wellington Paranormal, which is a spin-off of the 2014 film What We Do in the Shadows.
The central setting for this film is rural Oregon in the modern era. A preliminary flashback sequence takes place in 1995. Early sequences briefly take place in San Francisco, California.
Wolf Man had a domestic opening of $10,897,495 with screenings in 3,354 theaters.
Wolf Man came in at number two at the box office with $4,397,315 on its opening day, coming in after One of Them Days which had an opening of $4,480,348.
As of January 25th, 2025, Wolf Man holds a Starmeter score of 5.9 out of 10 on IMDB based on more than 7,300 user reviews.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Wolf Man has a Tomatometer score of 53% based on 208 posted critic reviews, including top critics. It has 110 positive reviews and 98 negative reviews, averaging 5.70 out of 10. The film has a Popcornmeter score of 54% based on more than 1,000 user ratings, averaging 3.3 out of 5.
On Metacritic, Wolf Man has a Metascore of 51 out of 100 based on 47 critic reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews. It has 13 positive reviews, making up 28% of the voting pool, 6 negative reviews equaling 13% of the total tally, and 28 mixed reviews at 60% of the total review score.
On Letterboxd, Wolf Man has a weighted average review score of 2.52 out of 5 based on 62,698 user votes.
Universal Monsters had been trying to do a reboot of Wolf Man since 2014, hoping that it would launch the "Dark Universe" shared continuity. However, when the 2017 reboot of The Mummy failed to impress the box office, the sun quietly went down on the Dark Universe. Interest renewed in 2020 with The Invisible Man in 2020, which proved to be a success both critically and at the box office, though a lot of its theater success is owed to the fact that it was the last major theatrical release of a film prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. The Invisible Man was also directed by Leigh Whannell.
As the evolution of this film began to take form, actor Ryan Gosling expressed deep interest in playing the lead character, owing largely to being a huge fan of the original 1941 film The Wolf Man. Coincidentally, this is similar to how Benicio del Toro became involved with playing the role of Larry Talbot in the 2010 remake of the The Wolfman. Allegedly due to scheduling conflict, Ryan Gosling had to drop out of the film, but remained on board as an executive producer. In 2024 Ryan Gosling starred in another reboot concept The Fall Guy, along with Emily Blunt. Coincidentally, Emily Blunt also played Gwen Conliffe in the 2010 version The Wolf Man.
Director Leigh Whannell has spoken about being heavily influenced by David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly from 1986. There are definitely narrative and visual similarities to The Fly to be found in this film. Both plots feature a female protagonist who is forced to watch a loved one slowly evolve into something monstrous. Both of the main male leads undergo a body horror transformation with very similar visual effects.
Neither of the words werewolf or lycanthropy are ever used in this film.
None of the traditional lore surrounding werewolves is used in this film either. Although the full moon makes an appearance in the film, as well as on promotional materials, there is nothing to indicate that there is a connection between this particular astrological phenomena and the condition that the film refers to as "Hills Fever". There is no mention of silver bullets or any kind of connection to silver. There is no wolfsbane (though there is a random reference to some death cap mushrooms). And there are no overtly supernatural connections such as seeing the sign of the pentagram materialize on the body of the werewolf's next victim, which has been used in the original The Wolf Man and even part of the werewolf mythos on the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.
In place of traditional lore, there is an opening narrative that describes lycanthropy as originating with an indigenous tribe and has been referred to as Ma'iingan Odengwaan, referred to by locals as Hills Fever, also known as "Face of the Wolf". Ma'iingan is a word used by the Ojibwe people and means wolf or timber wolf.
Screenwriter Corbett Tuck is the wife of director Leigh Whannell.
On opening night, there was at least one a-hole in the theater who had recently purchased a new iPhone and could not figure out how to turn the ringer off and received 3 phone calls in a row during a crucial scene, thus earning more than a few colorful lamentations from other members of the audience. True story.
The rental truck that the Lovells use is called Pierce Rentals. This is named for Jack Pierce, who was the original makeup artist on many of the early Universal Monsters movies, and was the man responsible for transforming Lon Chaney, Jr. into the Wolf Man. The rental truck sign states that it was established in 1941, which is the same year that The Wolf Man was released.
The creature design on the Wolf Man was all done using practical effects with no CGI.
Leigh Whannell has stated that he wanted to treat becoming a werewolf more like a disease, rather than some inexplicable supernatural phenomenon.
A prop of the Wolf Man was used at Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights event in 2024, which drew a considerable amount of criticism.
Daughter Ginger Lovell is named after Ginger Fitzgerald, the eponymous werewolf character from the 2000 Canadian film Ginger Snaps.
Applying the prosthetics on Christopher Abbott took two and a half to seven and a half hours depending on the stage of the transformation.
In addition to also directing The Invisible Man as well as this film, Leigh Whannell is also known for his work in front of the camera. He played Adam Faulkner-Stanheight - the first on-screen kidnap victim of Jigsaw in Saw. He is also known for his portrayal of Steven "Specs" Fisher in the Insidious film series.

Recommendations[]

External Links[]

Gallery[]

References[]