(Updated 11/01/2024)
The Wolf Man is one of Universal's most recognizable monsters, and now a whole new generation of audiences will get to experience the beast's toothy bite at the movies. WOLF MAN is from writer/director Leigh Whannell, who previously updated THE INVISIBLE MAN as a chilling tale of modern terror. (Whannell also co-created and co-starred in SAW, which set up his horror cred right from the beginning of his career.)
Here's the latest trailer for WOLF MAN and a lot of additional information about the January release.
What Is the Wolf Man Release Date?
Universal Pictures will release WOLF MAN in movie theaters on January 17, 2025.
Watch the New Wolf Man Trailer
This trailer immediately sets up WOLF MAN as a movie that leans on primal fears. What happens when someone you love becomes someone else? It probably doesn't happen to most of us like it does here, but that's an uncomfortable thing we've all faced. WOLF MAN seems to take the idea to a monstrous extreme.
And we wonder if Whannell is changing things up a little by having the cause of the werewolf transformation be something that isn't quite supernatural.
Who Stars in Wolf Man?
WOLF MAN seems to have a pretty contained cast, with Christopher Abbott as Blake, Julia Garner as his wife, Charlotte, and Matilda Firth as their daughter, Ginger. (Side note: It's probably a total coincidence, but it's fun to see a young woman named Ginger in this movie, vaguely echoing the great werewolf movie GINGER SNAPS from 2000.)
The cast also features Sam Jaeger, Ben Prendergast, Benedict Hardie, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly, and Milo Cawthorne. We wonder how many of them play characters who get eaten or shredded by Abbott's transformed character.
Wolf Man Is Not Part of a Larger "Universal Monsters" Universe
Several years ago Universal began to launch a "Dark Universe" story cycle which would update all the studio's classic monsters in a big set of interconnected movies. This was pretty quickly abandoned, but there's still plenty of reason to wonder if WOLF MAN might be connected to a movie like Whannell's THE INVISIBLE MAN.
In short, WOLF MAN is not connected to any other movies.
Wolf Man Was Born Out of Covid Isolation
Asked by Gizmodo if WOLF MAN takes place mostly in one location, as the trailers suggest, Whannell seemed to confirm that the movie does not roam very far from that farmhouse.
"I wanted to contain [the story] a little more," Whannell said. "I wanted to deal with this concept in a very intimate way. You know, we filmed during Covid. The first draft of this film was written in 2020… It’s weird what it does to the brain when you don’t leave the house for months on end. … the madness, the cabin fever that sets in, I think that really infected this script. And even though I would not call this a Covid movie in any way, I would say that the script reflects the mindset of that time. The isolation, the confinement to one place."
WOLF MAN opens on January 17, 2025.
All images courtesy of Universal Pictures.