Blue Valentine's Derek Cianfrance to direct Ryan Gosling's Wolfman movie
The werewolf movie is based on a pitch that Gosling made to the studio
Well, so much for Leigh Whannell single-handedly building a Dark Universe of his very own. The Invisible Man director was attached to make a new Wolfman movie for Universal with Ryan Gosling set to play the eponymous… wolf-man last year, but he has now been forced to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Luckily, Ryan Gosling knows a director who would apparently like to make a werewolf movie, and now Universal’s Wolfman is back on.
The new director is none other than previous Gosling-collaborator Derek Cianfrance, who directed him in Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond The Pines. That comes from Deadline, which says he’s just “in talks” for the gig, but surely Ryan Gosling can grease some wheels and make this happen if he and Cianfrance want to make a third movie together.
It sounds like a big reason for Cianfrance’s name coming up in the first is because Gosling has a big stake in ownership on this project. This new Wolfman, which is reportedly a modern-day thing unlike the Benicio del Toro Wolfman from a decade ago, is based on a pitch that Gosling himself made to the studio. Universal apparently decided it “fell in line” with its current plans for monster movies, and so it got the green light.
In a statement, Cianfrance said horror movies were his “first love” and introduced him to what movies were capable of “narratively, psychologically, and aesthetically.” He also said it’s a “dream come true” to work with Gosling on this. This will be his first movie since 2016's The Light Between Oceans, but in the years since he also directed HBO’s Mark Ruffalo twin drama I Know This Much Is True.
Now we just have to sit back and wait for Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll to show up and invite this new Wolfman and Elisabeth Moss to join the Dark Universe initiative and we’ll be in business.