Though Harry Knowles reported yesterday that Brett Ratner was very close to signing to take over directing duties on The Wolf Man, The Hollywood Reporter is now saying that there are four directors in contention. And they're an extremely varied bunch.
Those apparently meeting with Universal about the movie are Ratner, Frank Darabont, James Mangold and Joe Johnston. They would all produce very different movies, based on their past projects. Ratner we discussed yesterday.
Johnston's a real adventure movie man, having directed Jurassic Park III, Jumanji and Hidalgo. We hadn't imagined Wolf Man as fitting in that kind of mould, but there's nothing to say that Johnston couldn't go darker. He's certainly capable of making something entertaining, but we don't quite see the fit.
Mangold's a very interesting choice. He's a real character man, most famous for 3:10 To Yuma and Walk The Line. We'd trust that he'd make the movie all about why and how the wolf starts to take over Benicio Del Toro's character and we'd be very interested to see his take, but we have to say that if we were choosing, which obviously we're not, we'd unquestionably go for Darabont.
Firstly, the Shawshank Redemption director has easily the best CV of the bunch. He's brilliant at getting to the heart of character and story and he's not afraid of going to dark places. Also, he loves genre movies. We'd give him the job based solely on his almost brilliant, and still tragically without UK release date, The Mist. It's frightening, it's got terrific character work and it completely commits to being a horror movie, but one that treats the bizarre in a realistic way. That's exactly what The Wolf Man needs. Give this guy the job, please Universal.
What do you think?