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Writer/director Leigh Whannell pulled off something tremendous back in 2020. In the wake of the Dark Universe franchise failing to take off following the release of 2017’s The Mummy, the Australian filmmaker took on the challenge of introducing a fresh new take on The Invisible Man, and it wound up being an amazing and freaky success. Four years later, the filmmaker is now taking on another Universal Classic Monsters character, The Wolf Man, and based on the first-look footage that just premiered today at CinemaCon, audiences should start preparing now for another seriously scary big screen treat.
This afternoon, Universal Pictures hosted a presentation at the annual Las Vegas-based convention for movie theaters owners, and one of the most exciting titles featured in the preview of the studio’s upcoming slate was extremely fresh footage from Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man. The film is in production now, so there wasn’t too much material available to showcase at the event, but there was enough for the audience in The Colosseum Theater at Caesars Palace to get a sense of what the movie will be, and it looks excellent.
Opening with a shot of a dark forest at night, the Wolf Man CinemaCon footage cut to a dimly lit room where a young girl and her father (Christopher Abbott) are having a conversation on a couch. The child asks her dad if they are going to die, and while he tries to calm her by saying “No,” she instantly acknowledges it as a lie. He insists that he is telling her the truth, but she is having none of it, responding, “Everybody dies eventually.” After a pause, he explains that it is his job to protect her, saying, “I’m your daddy; all you want to do is keep the bad things outside.”
This is easier said than done, however. Following a shot of Christopher Abbott taking a flashlight down into a basement and another of co-star Julia Garner looking scared, the footage escalated with sounds of terror and a brief look at something moving around in the dark outside of a kitchen window. At the house’s front door, Abbott is seen running inside and then pressing his entire body against the barricade, trying with every ounce of effort to keep something big from crashing through.
It’s evidently an effort that is not totally successful. A scene with Abbott looking at his arm under a light reveals a long and bloody cut that looks like a big scratch from an animal, and in a subsequent shot, he is shown seemingly vomiting up blood. We then hear the actor say, “But they might already be inside.” With a final moment featuring Julia Garner and the little girl scared out of their wits together, the footage ended with the sound of an animalistic growl playing as the film’s title card with white-on-black text appeared.
All together, there was only a little over a minute of material from Wolf Man, but it left an awesome impression, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it throughout the rest of CinemaCon presentation. Things admittedly didn’t work out to well the last time we saw this particular Universal Classic Monster on the big screen, as director Joe Johnston‘s The Wolfman from 2010 was not well-received by critics and was a flop at the box office, but this looks like a completely different beast entirely (if you’ll pardon the pun). While the quick reel didn’t offer a totally clear preview of what audiences can expect when it comes to the main character’s transformation – arguably the most important part of any werewolf movie – I was left with full faith following the footage that Leigh Whannell will deliver something that is going to freak out movie-goers.
The stars of the film certainly have heat right now, with Christopher Abbott having just been featured in the Oscar-winning Yorgos Lanthimos movie Poor Things and Julia Garner landing the role of The Silver Surfer in Matt Shakman’s upcoming Fantastic Four feature for Marvel Studios. We can keep our fingers crossed that their work in Wolf Man will only help see their stars continue to rise in the years to come.
Similar to the situation with Bong Joon-ho‘s Mickey 17, which also debuted amazing footage at CinemaCon, the only issue we’re now facing with the release of the upcoming horror movie is the need for audiences to exhibit patience waiting for it to arrive. The film is sadly not on the 2024 movie release calendar, and it instead is presently scheduled to arrive in theaters everywhere on January 17, 2025. Sadly, this means that it will probably be a while before the first trailer is release (likely some time during spooky season), but you now know that the preview is something to anticipate.
Be on the look out for more updates about Wolf Man as we get closer to its release date, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more of our on-the-ground coverage of CinemaCon 2024.