Ryan Gosling Will Be The Wolfman In Universal’s New Movie – TheThings

It has recently been announced that The Wolf Man will be making a reappearance, with Ryan Gosling set to star as the titular man-beast.

2017's The Mummy was intended to be the first in a new series of movies set in an interconnected 'Dark Universe,' but when it failed at the box office, the studio decided to go back to the drawing board with its back-catalog of movie monsters.

They are now pressing ahead with a series of movies that will be independent of one another, and this is largely thanks to the success of this year's The Invisible Man, the Blumhouse-produced chiller that successfully brought to life one of Universal Studio's most treasured horror properties. There are several new movies now in the works at the studio, including Elizabeth Banks' The Invisible Woman, Dexter Fletcher's Dracula-themed Renfield, and reboots for both Dracula and Frankenstein.

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It has recently been announced that The Wolf Man, another of Universal's classic monsters will be making a reappearance, with Ryan Gosling set to star as the titular man-beast. This will be the actor's first horror movie role, although early in his career, he did make appearances in both the Goosebumps and Are You Afraid Of The Dark children's horror TV series.

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At the time of writing, little is known about the new movie.

However, according to trade-press publication notes, the new movie will be set in modern times and will be similar to the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Nightcrawler, except with a wolfy twist.

According to Variety, the script will be based on a pitch by Gosling himself, and it will be written byLauren Schuker Blum and Orange Is The New Black co-writer, Rebecca Angelo.

As to who might direct the film, we don't know for sure at this point. Universal has apparently been busy meeting filmmakers in preparation for the movie, one of whom is Cory Finley, a director best known for the dark comedies Thoroughbreds and Bad Education.

As the film hasn't started shooting yet, we don't know when the film might be released. Gosling's next project will be Project Hail Mary, an adaptation of author Andy Weir's upcoming novel, The Martian (not to be confused with the Matt Damon-starring space opera), so shooting of Wolfman (the official title for the new film) probably won't go ahead until the space dust has settled on the actor's new astronaut movie. Expect a 2022 movie release date at the earliest.

And that's all we know for now, but ifthe hairs on the back of your neck have risen at the news of a new Wolfman movie, now is as good a time as any to return to one of the previous iterations of the hairy character.

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As with those other movie monsters, Dracula and Frankenstein, we have never been short of a werewolf movie on the screen.

While the Underworld andTwilight filmsdid much to undermine thehorrifying natureof the hairy man-beast, we can still look back on such hair-raising films as The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, and Dog Soldiers for some werewolf-themed scares.

But the story of the werewolf goes back a lot further than these horror masterpieces, as Universal Studios first brought the creature to the screen in 1913 with the silent short, The Werewolf. This vintage werewolf movie told the tale of a Navajo woman who teaches her daughter how to become a werewolf, and featured a real wolf when creating the transformation sequence. Sadly, all prints of this 18-minute film were lost after a fire at the studio. However, Universal brought the creature to life several decades later with the 1935 movie Werewolf of London, and more famously in 1941 with The Wolf Man, which starred Lon Chaney Jr as Larry Talbot, the man who is bitten by a wolf and becomes the badly-in-need-of-a-shave monster.

Several sequels followed, including a team-up with another famous face from Universal's original monster universe, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, and a pairing with comedic duo Abbott and Costello.

The 1941 movie was later remade as The Curse Of The Werewolf, Hammer films' 1961 movie starring Oliver Reed, and later as The Wolfman, with Benicio Del Toro in the lead role of the hairy beast in director Joe Johnston's 2010 movie. These movies retained the story of the Chaney movie, the tale of a man who realizes the ancient curse related to the monster is linked to a family legacy.

Whether the Ryan Gosling-starring movie retains the plot line of the classic film and its subsequent remakes remains to be seen. While it will have a modern-day setting, it might be that it connects to the story told by these earlier films, as Gosling's character could be a direct descendant of Larry Talbot, and become the next man to become stricken by the family curse. Of course, it might tell its own story, as the plotting in the recent The Invisible Man had very little to do with the story that was originally told in Universal's 1933 telling of HG Wells' classic tale.

More details on the upcoming movie are expected soon, but if you're looking for a fix of some werewolf-themed horror, rewatch one of the classic movies we mentioned, or test the myth of the wolfman by taking a walk into your nearest woodland the next time a full moon can be seen in the sky!

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Lee Brown is a UK-based freelance writer, and has written movie-related articles for such websites as Flickering Myth, Blasting News, and So The Theory Goes. In his spare time, Lee continues to write, focussing on story writing, play writing, and poetry. Some of Lee's work has been published in printed and eBook formats, and he has had one play transmitted over local radio. He is an avid movie buff and TV binge-watcher, and probably spends more time than he should sat on the sofa!

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Ryan Gosling Will Be The Wolfman In Universal's New Movie - TheThings

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero