UPDATE! I got on the phone with Scott Stuber, BMOC at Universal and producer of The Wolfman and he set the record pretty straight.

On two competing cuts:

The movie’s been done for a while. We finished the cut, and obviously we are now mixing and scoring and putting in our final effects right now, but the movie’s been finished. The concept of having two competing cuts and the studio having their own editing room and all that simply not true.

On the rumored PG-13 cut:

We always conceived the movie as an R-rated film. We shot the movie with a lot of gore and blood and stuff. I think why that got out a little bit is that we had two test screenings on back to back nights at the end of the year, in November, roughly. What we were doing was finalizing the cut and we wanted to try three or four or five things differently so we could watch them back to back. So Abberline shows up in town and in one version he goes straight to speak to Benicio and in another version he had a conversation with Tony Hopkins and Emily Blunt in the hallway, which ended up being in the movie. In one version we tried a longer version of exchange between Emily and the Wolfman and another tighter version. We just wanted, before we finished, to look and see if it could go this way or that way.

You’re constantly doing that. We do it all the time. We do it on comedies all the time. Let’s try the action scene a little big longer or this joke a little bit harder. You try the A and B versions, because at the end of the day the audience is the champ. You’ve got to make the movie that satisfies them.

Here’s my original story, which is how I got Stuber on the phone in the first place:

Oh, internet. How you amuse.

Some blog called The Playist has run a story saying that there are two competing cuts of The Wolf Man at Universal, and that the movie is still in flux. Tons of sites jumped on this story without checking in to it. If this sounds familiar it’s because this story is literally months old and the whole thing is pan fried bullshit.

There were competing cuts of The Wolf Man, way back in the autumn of 2009. Universal had two cuts of two different lengths and with two different ratings, and they were testing them. Months ago. And they chose the R-rated cut. A month ago. And announced it was an R-rated movie. A month ago.

It seems unlikely that Universal is going to be fucking around with the movie at this point, with it being released in just a few weeks and with the rating secured. They have a movie that is locked. They have a movie that’s in the final stages of post. I don’t know if the movie is good or bad but I know it’s an R-rated cut and that was decided long before the Christmas break. And I bothered to take the time and simply confirm this with Universal.

So no story. No competing cuts of The Wolfman. Go back about your business.