Last year Universal decided to push back The Wolfman from April to November and this gave director Joe Johnston additional time to shoot more scenes and iron out any problems. Back in May we heard that they were adding more action scenes which included “a fight scene between two werewolves involving a fair amount of CG with them going up the walls and other bits of business”. Now according to The Daily Mail stunt supervisor Vic Armstrong and the cast have spent six weeks shooting more scenes which “saw a tougher, fiercer creature bounding around – and ready to attack on all fours.”
The 30 million dollar question for The Wolf Man was whether it walks like a man on its hind legs or like a wolf on all four. Plus, the supposedly frightening creature looked too cuddly, which was no good for a gothic horror movie starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt. ‘The Wolf was on its heels and it looked daft,’ an actor involved in the movie told me.
Vic came up with a great confrontation between the Wolf Man and the Werewolf. They really go after each other and it’s dramatic and exciting, whereas the stuff they shot first time round was limp.
‘The two stunt guys inside the costumes were exhausted, as Vic just had them doing the scene again and again until he was happy’, one of the crew who worked on the film at Pinewood Studios told me.
Benicio Del Toro flew to the UK for the re-shoots, Emily Blunt was, by that time, working on Gulliver’s Travels so was only available for three or four weekends, and Anthony Hopkins couldn’t return to London so he did his additional filming in LA.
Last night Universal confirmed that additional sequences were shot. ‘The full articulation of the transformational lead character will be realised when the film is completed and we are excited to share his incredible look with the world in the upcoming trailer’.
Johnston has been back in LA for the past five weeks overseeing the special effects and computer-generated images for the Universal film.
I guess we can’t really say which looks better, 2 legs or 4, as we haven’t seen anything yet. There was the Comic Con trailer from last year, but apart from that Universal haven’t got round to marketing it. I hope we get the trailer sooner rather than later because i’m getting tired of watching the blurred cam quality Con trailer to fulfil my Wolfman craving!
