My poor Wolfman!

For those who don't know, Guillermo Del Toro and Benicio Del Toro have teamed up to create an authentic remake of the original Werewolf of London for NBC Universal. According to the many rumors, the battle does not go well.

First off, there were rumors of many mishaps along the way. Primary production did not go smoothly or without a hitch. There were rumors of considerable disorganization. All this would mean nothing if Universal had not pushed back the release date for the Wolfman some five times. Reports of the original schedule are somewhat contradictory, but the original release date was supposed to be October 12 2008! Feb 13th 2009 was the next scheduled release date. Aprl 3, 2009 was the next date. November 6th 2009 was the penultimate date. We now have the absolute final delivery date of Feb 12, 2010. That is something like 16 months late.

Why is the movie 16 months late? What the hell has been going on for the past 16 months? Rumor has it that there has been some major wrangling over the final cut of this movie. There are at least two major versions of this film circulating at Universal. The first was scored by Danny Elfman, and it has been thrown out. Evidentally, it did not do well in market tests. Executives believed there were obvious problems in the narrative that needed correction.

To fix these problems, Universal decided to seize control of the project and produce a studio cut of the movie. In the process of fixing this edition of the film, Universal has had three different editors, one of who is famed as a 'rescue editor'. That fellow is Walter Murch, a 911 emergency guy you call--at great expense--when you have a big-budget movie that is in danger of sinking.

Evidentally, the changes Mr, Murch and company made were so substantial, Danny Elfman's musical score no longer fit the picture. Not surprisingly, in 16 months time, Mr. Elfman had moved on to other projects, and could not be recalled to rework his original musical score for The Wolfman. Universal then turned to Paul Haslinger--a fellow I like a lot--to do a fully modern Electronica/Industrial style score.

To make matters worse, we are about 12 days away from the release of The Wolfman, and we have not a single professional review of the movie yet. This means that there have been no early showings for critics. There is still time for them to do this, but we have reason to be wary. This is always a suspicious move. Whenever a studio refuses to do early showings of a film for critics, it means that they are hiding something. Given the history of difficulties and the 16 month tardy release, I would suspect that they have something to hide.

Personally, I am extremely bumbed out by this news. I have usually liked Werewolf movies. I have usually like Guillermo's movies. I was looking forward to this film with great relish. I felt this could be a great movie because of its aparent fidelity to the original by Universal. At this point, the signs are pretty bad. I am greatly concerned that this movie will flop and flop badly. This could compromise Guillermo's ability to make "At the Mountain's of Madness".

So el senior Guillermo Del Toro is working on At the Mountains of Madness, aye?

Last night I watched a fascinating documentary on H.P. Lovecraft. It is called Lovecraft: The Fear of the Unknown. Evidently it was released direct to DVD sometime in 2008. It just arrived on Blu-Ray last week. I obtained my copy from Netflix.

Some great Hollywood people including John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro and Neil Gaiman were interviewed extensively about Lovecraft. It is obvious that these men have studied Lovecraft closely over a long time, and that Lovecraft had a big formative impact on all of them. Of course, two of my favorite bands of all time (Iron Maiden and Metallica) make plenty of direct references to Lovecraft.

What is fascinating about this documentary is seeing what an immediate and powerful impact Lovecraft had on horror and science fiction. Such ancient classics as King Kong were heavily influenced by Lovecraft's style. So too was the creature from the Black Lagoon, which is a riff on the Shadow Over Innsmouth. Guilermo accused John Carpenter of directly ripping off At the Mountains of Madness to make The Thing.

Carpenter politely declined to combat that statement, simply saying his movie was based on the book "Who Goes There?", and that he sincerely hoped that Guillermo will successfully make At The Mountains of Madness. Guillermo fully admitted that he has been attempting to put together an investment group to do this movie, but there is conflict over how to approach it. Everybody recognizes that it will have to be a grand special effects bonanza, perhaps rivaling Avatar in scope.

A quick check of IMDB indicated that Guillermo is a very busy man. He has a number of irons in the fire right now, not the least of which is the two (yep 2) Hobbit movies. I bet this pisses off Peter Jackson quite a bit. So far, At the Mountains of Madness does not yet appear on his schedule. It might be the middle of the decade, like 2015 before we see it, though.

Still, this is very exciting news. Most people believe that At the Mountains of Madness is H.P. Lovecraft's finest work. Just capturing the mood of the book made The Thing one of the greatest Sci-Fi horror movies of all time. Incidentally, I do agree with Guillermo that John Carpenter's The Thing owes a hell of a lot of cash to Lovecraft.

If done correctly, Del Toro could make one of the greatest Sci-Fi horror movies of all time.