Who Will Helm The Wolfman? Surely Not Brett Ratner!

Werewolf – There wolf!

Just a bit of Young Frankenstein to get the ball rolling!

The other day we posted that Mark Romanek had quit The Wolfman because he couldn’t make the film for under $100 million. The film is due to go into production soon, so there was a major scramble to find a director to replace him.

Then Quint at Aintitcool reported that the two contenders for taking over the helm were Breck Eisner (Sahara) and Cloverfield director Matt Reeves.

Now Aintitcool is reporting that fan favorite (cough, cough) Brett Ratner has taken over directing duties on the film.

The first two names are interesting choices: Sahara has a bad reputation, but I really enjoyed it and saw it as a good franchise starter. Kind of an Indiana Jones meets James Bond sort of thing, although I doubt we’ll ever see a sequel.

I think that Eisner may have some talent, but I don’t see The Wolfman matching his directing chops. I could be wrong, because Quint over at AICN is reporting that Eisner was trying to get a Creature of The Black Lagoon film off the ground (or should that be on dry land?).

As for Reeves, I haven’t seen Cloverfield – I’m in the UK, and it hasn’t been released here yet, but he allegedly has an Invisible Woman film and the Cloverfield sequel in the pipeline, so that may throw him out of the running.

Now if it really is Ratner, then that could cause uproar among film fans across the world (well, the internet anyway).

I have nothing against Ratner, in fact I quite like his films – I see him as the heir to Richard Donner: The type of director who can move back and forth between genres. He may not be the world’s greatest director, or have the best looking films, but he knows how to entertain.

If one looks at his track record, you can see that the closest thing that he has made to The Wolfman has been Red Dragon, and although it may not be as good as Manhunter, it’s a damn sight better than Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. However, some people see X-Men 3 as a horror movie, but we won’t get into that here!

He may not be the most ideal choice for the film, but he’s probably no worse than the two mooted previously.

This news is all very interesting, but none of these guys scream “werewolf director” to me.

I love a good werewolf film… hell, I even enjoy a bad werewolf film – but I’d really like to see another great one to match John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London.

We should find out in the next week or so, but lets hope that Universal hires on some decent talent and not in haste despite the ticking clock.

A quick question for you: Who would you rather have direct The Wolfman: Ratner or Van Helsing director Stephen Sommers?

Source: Aintitcool.com