http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=18797

Romanek Helming The Wolfman
Source: The Hollywood Reporter February 8, 2007

Director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) is set to helm The Wolfman, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Scott Stuber and Mary Parent are producing the remake of the classic Universal Studios monster, which has Benicio Del Toro attached to star. Del Toro also is on board as a producer with Rick Yorn.

The movie will hew to the period pedigree of the 1941 original, in which a man returns from the U.S. to his ancestral home in Victorian-era Great Britain, gets bitten by a werewolf and begins a hairy moonlight existence.

Andrew Kevin Walker wrote the screenplay. A fall start is being planned.

Romanek is a good choice. I thought One Hour Photo was creepy and twisted.

Sounds good. Was wondering what he was doing next.

With the exception of 8MM I give a huge thumbs up to anything involving Andrew Kevin Walker.

Well, this certainly fuckin sucks:
Director Drops Out of The Wolfman
Source: Variety
January 29, 2008


"Director Mark Romanek has dropped out of Universal Pictures The Wolfman, reports Variety.

The trade says Romanek exited the film late Monday night over creative differences. The film has long had Benicio Del Toro aboard to play the werewolf, and the studio just set Emily Blunt (Charlie Wilson's War) and Anthony Hopkins to play the other leads in the film.

Universal maintains that Romanek left the project in strong shape and that it expects to set another director quickly. No word on whether a Feb. 18 start date will remain in place.

The studio is targeting a February 13, 2009 release date for the horror flick."

I think there's plenty of other directors who could make a good Wolf Man movie. I'm more excited by the cast. Del Toro, Blunt, and Hopkins are a solid group.

I could do without Hopkins.. as I fear he'd mail it in with a Dracula like performance.

Is this Romanek a big loss? I don't think so.

What has this clown done? One Hour Photo? That sucked balls.

This is a blessing in disguise for this remake.

Are you insane!
This guy is on way way to becoming the next David Fincher.
The videos this guy has done alone are amazing! The Johnny Cash cover of Trent Reznor's Hurt is in less than 4 minutes a more complete emotional film experience than 70% of the films I saw last year. He has done amazing videos for artists like Eels, Red Hot chili Peppers, Weezer, Beck (Devil's Haircut), Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails (Perfect Drug, Closer)David Bowie, etc.
One hour Photo was also a well done feature with a very interesting visual element to it. This was a very valuable loss to this project.

QFT. Mark Romanek has shown incredible talent so far.

As far as Del Toro, looks like he's coming full circle from his Big Top days:

Romanek is a talented video director but he's really unproven in feature length material. One Hour Photo was very mediocre, if not visually interesting. Shame that he's out though. They'll probably just bring in someone who can shoot the thing and turn it in on time and under budget. I wonder what Paul W. Anderson is doing right now?

While I hold One Hour Photo in much higher regard than you, I definitely agree about the second half of your post. "Creative differences" always makes me shake my head, as it can often be interpreted as the director wanting to make a genuinely interesting picture with some real thought behind it, and the studio is after a brainddead, by-the-numbers potential money machine. Of course, who can fault them for that...

posted by Harry over at Ain't It Cool News .com (regarding the replacement director for THE WOLF MAN):

"Well word has reached me, from an incredibly reliable source - that you've settled on Brett Ratner as the director. With the work that Romanek, Baker and Benicio have done - I have no doubt that Brett will capture enough magic to assemble a trailer campaign that will sell the film. But you really need much more than a trailer.

As a studio... as UNIVERSAL STUDIOS - you have very few icons. There's FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA, THE WOLFMAN, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN... they're the characters and the franchises that sealed the launch of UNIVERSAL -- and in the relaunching of these characters - you must be careful. "


Now, I don't hate Ratner at all like most people. I think he fucked up X-Men and Rush Hour 2 and 3 are extremely lazy excuses for films but I do enjoy the hell out of Red Dragon and I like most of the Family Man. Still, it does suck that we won't get to see Romanek's vision for this.

Bad news.
Ratner is a a complete hack. His movies make money but are devoid of nearly any artistic merit on his part. Some of his collaborators are very talented but this guy is just a stuffed suit churning out product.
Red Dragon was phoned in by everyone involved. Norton has never been less impressive (well other than The Italian Job).

Romanek even with his limited resume is far more talented than Ratner could ever hope to be.

The only good thing that could come from it would be the amount of preproduction that has already gone into it and the limited time before production has to start, which hopefully means that Ratner would mostly be coming in to simply direct traffic and not have much to do creatively beyond that. That is unless Universal really didn't like where Romanek was going with the project at all and it means a complete overhaul.

Yikes I may have preffered Paul Anderson.

Whoa! Hey, buddy, I know things are looking bad right now but there's no need for that kind of language!

Ratner's attachment is the equivalent of being anally raped, only with a slightly smaller penis. Anderson will always be the largest phallus destroying filmmaking one anus at a time.

Aw fuck, not Ratner. That's the best they could come up with?

So what does that make Uwe Boll? A fist?

Shit. I feel like how I felt when I found out that fuck up was doing X-Men 3.

Fuck life, this is a big letdown, especially with the sweet cast.

According to comingsoon.net, a director has not been chosen.

Frank Darabont and James Mangold are being considered.

Yeah, this looks more promising now:http://chud.com/articles/articles/13...MAN/Page1.html

/film reports that Joe Johnston is taking over as director on this project now. I consider this terrible news. He ruined the Jurassic Park Franchise. I would have rather have had Ratner to be honest. Johnston better not make this PG-13 or I will be pissed!!!

I think you're kidding yourself if you honestly believe this will be anything but PG-13, no matter the director.

Um...Andrew Kevin Walker has written nothing but screenplays for R-rated films. Johnston has never directed an R-rated film.