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After seeing the first trailer for Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, I had many questions. Is the whole movie set in a single location? Is it linked with the director’s previous Universal Monster movie, Invisible Man? And did he intentionally pay homage to Jurassic Park with that first sequence?
Thankfully, Whannell hopped on a video call with io9 earlier this week to talk about all that and more. The co-creator of Saw and Insidious also explained how not just covid, but also the harsh, painful realities of life influenced his take on this character. He cleared up questions surrounding the leak from Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights that seemingly revealed his finished creature before any footage was released. And we also talked about how the film changed after star Ryan Gosling dropped out and Christopher Abbott joined the cast in his place.
If you haven’t already seen the trailer for the January 17 release, watch it below, then read our in-depth Q&A with Whannell.
Germain Lussier, io9: Wolf Man, werewolves, they have such a rich history across all media. What was the scariest thing about tackling the character in the franchise?
Leigh Whannell: Probably that. The concept is so known, as you said. When you’re dealing with something that is embedded in worldwide culture you’re coming up against a lot of expectations. If you’re writing an original movie, you’ve got an uphill climb to get people to pay attention. But the good side of that is nobody knows the rules. The problem with Wolf Man is everybody knows the rules. And if you’re going to bend them or break some of them or move left of center, then you have to be prepared for some backlash from some corners. But I really was determined to give people something new with this. So that was probably the scariest part.
io9: The trailer looks like it’s very isolated, secluded, and maybe even a one-location movie. I guess we’ll see. But is that true? And was that a way for your film to distinguish itself from the others?
Whannell: Definitely. I think I wanted to contain it a little more. I wanted to deal with this concept in a very intimate way. You know, we filmed during covid. The first draft of this film was written in 2020. And that was a very specific mindset, as you remember. Like it’s funny now, looking back on it, I was just talking to someone the other day about 2020. What a weird blip in human history.
io9: Totally.
Whannell: It’s weird what it does to the brain when you don’t leave the house for months on end. And it’s not even like my conditions were bad. Some people really were struggling. I was at home every day, but I was able to feed my kids and go on with life. But even then, the madness, the cabin fever that sets in, I think that really infected this script. And even though I would not call this a covid movie in any way, I would say that the script reflects the mindset of that time. The isolation, the confinement to one place.
The transformation begins in Wolf Man. – © Universal io9: Okay. That’s cool. The trailer hints at it, but obviously you talked about things you expect from a Wolf Man—you expect an epic kind of transformation. It seems like maybe it’s a little drawn out here. So I wonder if you could tell us or tease a little bit about your take on the Wolf Man transformation in the movie.
Whannell: Well, it all comes from that desire to do something people hadn’t seen before. I feel like when you’re dealing with a character that’s very well-trodden, you have to offer up something different. And sometimes I think people don’t know what they want until they see it. I mean, even thinking of something like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. That’s an iconic character. Chris Nolan’s coming into this movie. There’s so many different ways you can go with the Joker, right? As we’ve seen. I feel like he made a conscious decision to give people a Joker they had not seen before. And it worked. And so that was my thinking going into this was “What do I do?” And I felt like you can’t compete with Rick Baker and what he did on American Werewolf in London.
io9: Right.
Whannell: So what if I took more of a disease approach? And approached it more like something like The Fly?
io9: Which the trailer very briefly teases though we don’t get to see the full Wolf Man. However, something that came out of Halloween Horror Nights a couple of weeks back seemed like it was. Was that your Wolf Man? And what can you say about how that all went down?
Whannell: No, I mean, without spoiling anything, that’s not our Wolf Man. And I guess, movies have so many different people involved. It’s like this huge octopus with many tentacles and you can’t always control every single aspect of something. So sometimes something might get out there that doesn’t represent what you’re doing and it just falls through the cracks. So no, it doesn’t represent [our movie]. I think I would say Arjen Tuiten, who was our prosthetics designer and makeup artist on this movie, he’s a brilliant artist. I would put my money on him that he’s always going to give you something right.
io9: And I think you probably have the same reputation by this point too.
Whannell: Well, yeah. And so it’s not fun if something gets out there that maybe misrepresents the film, especially in the internet age when things can spread around quickly. But all you can do is say, “Well, let’s wait for people to see the movie and then [they’ll] make up their minds,” because I’m really confident in what Arjen and I did with the movie.
Director Leigh Whannell (right) on set of Wolf Man. – © Universal io9: I can’t wait. Now this is the question you’re going to be asked a billion times, but I’m here early so I’m going to get on it. You made Invisible Man. You made Wolf Man. This is secluded so I don’t think we’re going to see any crossover, but in your mind, do they take place in the same universe?
Whannell: I would say, in a conscious way, I didn’t want that to happen. However, the family is in San Francisco. And I do think of this film as like a spiritual cousin to Invisible Man in some ways. But I would say it doesn’t take place in the literal same universe—but it very much takes place in the same vibe. To me, it feels like a spiritual cousin and that’s my approach to these monster movies, a more grounded approach like I did with Invisible Man.
io9: Okay excellent. Now, Chris Abbott is awesome. I’ve loved him for years and it’s so cool to see him as a title character here. But he obviously wasn’t the first Wolf Man. It was Ryan Gosling. How did the movie change once Ryan left and Chris came on?
Whannell: Yeah, Ryan’s production company was involved in the beginning and he was looking at it as something to act in. And then of course, schedules change and the years go by. I’m really happy he stayed on as a producer, but I’m really so happy with what Chris did. I’ve known his work for years and I’ve always been a fan of his. But when it occurred to me that he could play this role, I was obsessed with that idea. I mean, as a movie fan, if I wasn’t involved with this movie, I would be excited to see Chris Abbott play a role like this.
io9: Oh yeah.
Whannell: There’s certain actors you know they’re going to give you something different.
io9: Yes, and I think Julia Garner is one of those people. She’s got a year coming up next year and watching the trailer, again, it’s called Wolf Man. But she seems to be the lead character. Am I getting the right vibes when I watch that here?
Whannell: I would say it’s genuinely equal. I think when you see the movie, you’ll see what I mean. Like it’s a family unit. And I feel like all of them have a big piece in this so I wouldn’t tip it one way or the other.
Julia Garner in Wolf Man – © Universal io9: I also loved the kind of cold open of the trailer, the truck in the tree. Gotta ask, were the Jurassic Park vibes intentional?
Whannell: Well, I do love that sequence in The Lost World when Julianne Moore is trapped in that sort of truck that’s hanging off the cliff. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I love Jurassic Park. It had such a big effect on me. And I think what happens with movies like that is they go into your subconscious. And even if you’re not consciously writing it, you’re trying to create something that evokes that same sense of fear that I felt watching Jurassic Park in the theater. So it’s in there on a subconscious level for sure.
io9: You might not want to answer this and that’s okay if not. But I love the last shot of the trailer. About when does that happen in the movie, if you can say?
Whannell: I don’t want to give it away. But that’s not the climax of the movie, I’ll say that.
io9: Okay. So we have a daughter and a wife being hunted by the father. Are daddy issues a theme in this movie?
Whannell: For me, I wouldn’t say it’s daddy issues. I think it’s about family. One of the beautiful things about being with family is this intense love you have for your children, for your spouse, if you’re lucky. Not everybody gets that. But what’s tragic about it is you know you’re going to lose these people. You know, I’ve been thinking about my parents a lot lately because they’re getting older and this sense of mortality creeps in. Everybody knows that the deal is, the bargain is you’re not going to be with everyone forever. That day’s going to come. You get a phone call and it’s like, “It’s your sister or it’s your uncle” and they say, “I’m really sorry to tell you, your dad just passed” or whatever. And we all know that day is coming. We try not to think about it because it would be depressing to walk around all day and think, “Oh, one day I’m going to lose my wife, my father, my mother.” We avoid that conversation. But it is coming. And what I do when I write horror films is, I think about the questions that no one talks about. This unspoken thing. And so I wanted to make a movie not about daddy issues but about the idea that we only have a short amount of time with people. Eventually, we’re going to lose them.
I’ve had to watch friends of mine die. Somebody lost their partner early. A really good friend of mine, his wife was diagnosed with a serious terminal illness. And over the course of the next two years, she disintegrated. And it was a very hard thing to watch. And it’s the real-life version of the horror movie. My friend actually described it to me one day as “It’s like a horror movie.” There’s the fun part when you get married or whatever then there’s the part where you’re cleaning someone up on the toilet. The Michael Haneke film Amour was a very serious… I did a film festival during pre-production. Every Wednesday night we would watch a movie. It was called the Full Moon Film Club.
io9: Nice.
Whannell: And Amour was one of the movies we watched. So that is what I was trying to get at with this movie is that idea, as opposed to like, “I hate my father because he beat me up.”
io9: Well, that is an incredible answer. It makes me want to see it that much more and I’m sure I’ll talk to you in a couple of months.
Whannell: I can’t wait for you to see it when it comes out.
Wolf Man hits theaters January 17, 2025.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
