WIRE Buzz: Leigh Whannell directing Wolfman; The Sims reality show; Percy Jackson show

After causing the Universal Monster fandom to undergo a ravenous transformation of its own back when the Wolfman movie (and its star, Ryan Gosling) was announced back in May, the film has added a member to its creative team that looks to set it up for success. The Invisible Man filmmaker Leigh Whannell already proved he could make a Universal Monster work for the Blumhouse model, and now he’ll look to work similar magic under the light of the full moon.

According to Deadline, the filmmaker will helm the movie and write a treatment for the project “inspired by the 1941 classic,” from which writers Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo will pen the screenplay. Alongside Whannell comes Blumhouse, which was not originally attached to the Universal movie.

Whannell originally passed on the film, perhaps because he had many other irons in the fire (like an Upgrade TV series), but came back around after Jason Blum asked him to consider the film again.

There’s no timeline yet for Wolfman, but this solidification of the creative team means things are starting to fall into place.

Next, reality show fans who’ve been filling the void left by coronavirus with video games may soon see their two passions overlap. Thanks to a new TBS reality show about The Sims 4 — basically the top Sims content creators battling it out in all their gaming glory — gamers are one step away from being able to compete in a reality show entirely digitally. At least they don’t have to learn Simlish this way.

Called The Sims Spark’d, the four-episode reality show features 12 contestants after a prize of $100,000. That sounds crazy, right? It is. Just take a look at its first trailer:

Hosted by Rayvon Owen (American Idol finalist and Sims superfan); judged by Kelsey Impicciche, Tayla Parx, and Dave Miotke; and featuring competitors like Doctor Ashley and Xmiramira, The Sims Spark’d is a bonkers experiment in crossover multimedia. Filmed segments of people sitting at keyboards merge with in-game footage of creation, life, and death. It’s gonna be a rollercoaster — and not a Rollercoaster Tycoon, either.

The Sims Spark’d premieres on July 17, then airs weekly after that.

Finally, fans of Percy Jackson have some news about the upcoming live-action Disney+ show straight from the source. Series creators and power couple Rick and Beth Riordan took to Twitter to give fans a realistic look inside the writing process taking the beloved mythological YA series to the small screen — and it’s going to be another big stretch of waiting for fans who've been twiddling their thumbs since the second film.

The Riordans commented separately on the process, with Rick explaining that the writing will take months and the series likely won’t air for at least two years:

Beth gave a more specific update on the writing, saying that they’re close to wrapping up the pilot outline — which seems to indicate that they haven’t progressed far past the development stage:

However, there’s still hints of a “team” being assembled for the project, so even if it’s slow going (and no industry production is going quickly under pandemic conditions), it’s going.