It’s been almost six years since Mark Romanek last made a movie – his directorial debut, 2002’s One Hour Photo. And now it looks like he’ll have to wait a bit longer before making another one, after he today left Universal Pictures’ horror tentpole, The Wolf Man, at the eleventh hour.
The 48 year-old director exited the big-budget remake, which was set to start filming in March with Benicio Del Toro in the title role, and Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt also on board, citing a number of creative differences – one of which, apparently, was that the budget just wasn’t big enough.
With that budget standing at around $100 million ($15 million of which will come in the form of tax breaks for shooting the film in the UK), Universal clearly begged to differ, and thus Romanek exited stage left, pursued by wolf.
And with so much money at stake, Universal is keen not to let the project fall apart. A new director will apparently be announced soon, possibly before the end of the week. Who could this be? Not a clue. We’ve heard tell that Guillermo del Toro was once interested in directing the resurrection of one of Universal’s unholy trinity of classic creatures, but now that he seems committed to The Hobbit, we can safely rule him out.
Hey, what’s Sam Raimi doing these days?
As ever, we’ll bring you the news of the new director when we get it.