Universal’s big redo of The Wolf Man, scheduled to start shooting on February 18th, is suddenly in a lot of trouble: director Mark Romanek quit last night.
There’s been a lot of tension between the studio and Romanek for months now, according to inside sources. Universal has apparently been looking over his shoulder the whole time, not entirely sure what they were going to get from the director. Months ago I was hearing rumblings that Romanek was going to be asked to leave the film, but once we got into the new year I figured all systems were go. Apparently not.
With Benecio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt all cast, and with the movie weeks from a start date, all of this leaves Universal in a tough situation, although one they might now be used to, after dealing with the defections from State of Play. The studio insists that they’ll find another director and move on, but whoever steps in now will have missed most of the integral creative decision-making and will just be a traffic cop on set. In the meantime I’m hoping that Romanek talks about what happened in his final days on The Wolf Man.