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Wolf Man's Horrific New Trailer is Giving Us All the Cronenberg Vibes (WATCH)
Wolf Man arrives exclusively on the big screen Friday, January 17, 2025.
Watch out, Brundlefly! You might just meet your match in writer-director Leigh Whannell's take on lupine monsters in the upcoming Wolf Man.
The film's official trailer, which dropped during the Blumhouse panel at New York Comic Con Friday, gives off some serious Cronenberg vibes, teasing a werewolf infection akin to a deteriorative disease that eats away at the body and turns the mind into primal mush. Blake, the main character played by Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), looks a real mess, recalling Jeff Goldblum's hapless scientist in The Fly as his hair, fingernails, and grasp of human speech drop off at an alarming rate.
"I felt like with Wolf Man, the thing that presented itself the easiest or that seemed to be staring me in the face was [the idea of] disease, terminal illness or at least degenerative diseases and I felt like that and Wolf Man really dovetailed nicely together," Whannell told the crowd at the 2024 New York Comic-Con.
He also discussed taking a second crack at a classic Universal Horror monster after helming the 2020 reimagining of The Invisible Man.
"I guess these classic monsters, they’re so durable. You can make them contemporary," he explained. "I feel like that’s what I tried to do with Invisible Man, take this classic monster that’s been around 100 years or more and put it in the modern world. The idea of doing that with Wolf Man was really attractive because it’s such a known monster and the image of it is something that’s embedded in people’s minds! The Invisible Man, there’s nothing there to see, literally. But the Wolf Man, people really have an image, so I really wanted to kind of drag that into contemporary times.”
Actor Chris Abbott elaborated on the themes of classic monsters and disease.
"We really tried to focus on the tragedy of, 'One day you're living a normal life and going through everyday troubles with your partner, and then what if that's then taken away from you, like Alzheimer's'" Abbott says in the latest issue of Empire. "[We] fed that into the idea of transitioning into a wolf."
"Upgrade was more sci-fi action. I was watching a lot of domestic thrillers when I wrote [the 2020 reimagining of] The Invisible Man, because I love that genre," adds Whannell, who co-wrote the film's screenplay with Corbett Tuck. "This is me saying, 'I just wanted to make something that is straight-up, pure horror."
Watch the official trailer for Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man
What is Wolf Man about?
A contemporary update of Universal's classic monster movie, The Wolfman (1941), Wolf Man centers around Blake (Christopher Abbott), a San Francisco father and husband struggling to keep his marriage together. In a last-ditch attempt to stave off divorce, Blake convinces his high-powered wife, Charlotte (Ozark's Julia Garner), to take a break from the hustle and bustle of city life and visit his missing father's remote property in Oregon along with their daughter, Ginger (Coma's Matlida Firth).
"But as the family approaches the farmhouse in the dead of night, they’re attacked by an unseen animal and, in a desperate escape, barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter," reads the official synopsis. "As the night stretches on, however, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable, and Charlotte will be forced to decide whether the terror within their house is more lethal than the danger without."
Sam Jaeger (The Handmaid’s Tale), Ben Prendergast (The Sojourn Audio Drama) and Benedict Hardie (The Invisible Man), newcomer Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly (Shortland Street), and Milo Cawthorne (Shortland Street) round out the main cast.
Check out first-look photos and a new poster for Blumhouse horror update, Wolf Man
When does Wolf Man open in theaters?
Wolf Man will exclusively open in theaters everywhere Friday, January 17, 2025.
Whannell serves as an executive producer on the movie alongside Beatriz Sequeira, Mel Turner, and Ken Kao. Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling, who was originally attached to star, is a producer with Blumhouse founder and CEO Jason Blum.
Originally published Oct 18, 2024.
