Just over a year ago, Joe Johnston's remake of The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro came out, to pretty crummy reviews. But Universal refuses to give up on the classic monster movies, so they're giving Wolfman one more chance.
Universal owns the rights to all of the classic black and white monsters — including Dracula, Wolfman, the Hunchback, the Phantom, the Mummy, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, and even the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And they've been itching to sell some of these beasties to the new pro-supernatural audience. It's been a looong time since they've had a big monster hit (Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula is the last great Universal monster film we can remember enjoying).
So despite the disaster that was The Wolfman, the monster train is still racing forward. Moviehole is reporting that instead going ahead with plans for a Wolfman sequel (box office returns being pretty poor for the picture) they're just rebooting the whole franchise altogether. Werewolf is apparently getting kicked around as the title, and it could, "share a link to the original George Waggner film (from 1941) rather than Joe Johnston's ill-fated 2009 remake."
Seems a bit rash to reboot the entire thing while the dismal failure of The Wolfman is still fresh in the public's mind, but perhaps they're mad to cash in on the teen supernatural trend. Moviehole suspects that a director and cast will be announced any day now, with an intent to film this fall.
Meanwhile we haven't heard a word about The Creature From The Black Lagoon movie in ages. Priorities, people.