Ah, The Wolf Man. The Curse Of No-Director finally ends. First, Mark Romanek, director of One Hour Photo, left the project weeks before it was to start production. Then rumour had it that Brett Ratner was the next possible choice, which was an option as horrifying as the classic film itself. Then word was that John Landis of An American Werewolf In London fame (and yes, often the forgotten director of that seminal Michael Jackson horror music video, Thriller) was in talks with Universal about taking over. Finally, it's confirmed that Joe Johnston would be the replacement for Romanek.
Joe who??
He's the guy who did Hidalgo and Jurassic Park III. I don't find much that's memorable about both films, but are they better or worse than Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand? What do you think?
The Wolf Man remake has some interesting names attached to it - Andrew Kevin Walker for script, Benicio Del Toro for lead role, Anthony Hopkins as Larry Talbot's father, Rick Baker for creature effects. But the fact that it's a remake, and of a much-loved Universal classic, well, it just sends shivers up some people's spines.
The Rocketeer, Jumanji and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids too :)
I prefer Joe !
I was gonna say! Joe Johnston from The Rocketeer fame of course. :)
Anyway, remake schmremake. I've never seen the original, looking much more forward to watching that.
Joe Johnston was also one of the leading designers for the original Star Wars trilogy.
I don't want to turn this into a Chuck Norris sort of hype, but Joe Johnston is one of the classic figureheads of early Industrial Light & Magic. Special Effects-wise he is one of the absolute greats, amongst people like Dennis Muren, John Dykstra and Stan Winston.
And then he turned director...
Fair enough, he's certainly not bad (JP III is ten times the movie JP II was) but he needs a good script to get the story going.
Am I bad for having never seen The Rocketeer? I still can't figure out how that happened. Going to do my homework now.
Joe Johnston > Brett Ratner. Times one thousand.
Of all the Joe Johnston movies listed here so far, The Rocketeer is easily the best one. His very best movie has not been mentioned, however: October Sky. It's a great, underrated movie, with a young Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role. Basically Hula Girls with rockets instead of hula dancing. :-)
Didn't he do Virus as well. I liked that one as well and The Rocketeer. But I was hoping for someone who is not known for doing action films and makes me wonder why they chose him of all those candidates.
Never understood the Ratner hate even though he would be wrong for this film.
I assumed everyone knew who Joe Johnston was...
that is actually a very good point, Garth. but since it is not a case similar to The Invasion, because The Wolf Man hasn't started shooting, perhaps we could still hold out hope that the director could imbue his vision, no matter how much of it, into the production?
You are absolutely right Garth. If a name director had come along they would have wanted to make "their" version of the film which would have pushed back the production even more. Maybe they should have let Rick Baker direct it. He and Romanek were on the same page I'm guessing and I'm sure Baker has absorbed wast ammount of filmmaking knowlidge over the years.
But I want to know what the beef was between Romanek and the Studios.
Obviously part of the rush has to do with the writers' strike. They have a property, which, in the eyes of the money men, is ready to roll. They need to get it going in order to have something to put out there in the next year or so. I'm in 100% agreement - it would be a much more promising situation if whoever was brought on could make THEIR film. All very strange - who knows what the final product will look like.
Swarez, that's actually a good idea re: Dick Baker. That would have been a decent choice, probably as good a choice as any other.
I don't know how true these rumours about the strike being over are, but I think it would be interesting if it ended in the next week. I wonder if the studio would rethink their choice and consider giving it to a Darabont or whoever and let him have a crack at rewriting it for himself or something.
And yeah, I'm still intrigued by what the fallout was between Romanek and the studio. I would think that everything would be in place three weeks before shooting, that there wouldn't even really be any decisions left that would be big enough to cause such a rift.