Do you want to know why Mark Romanek left the Universal Pictures’ The Wolf Man? It’s simple. Because he can. You can afford to be picky when you are an accomplished director in his other fields.
The top video-clip and commercials director is not committing career hara-kiri like the author of A Million Little Pieces (this is a project that the helmer was once attached to direct). While the trades are stating reasons like “the film in a
dispute over the budget”, when you are a director investing more than 12 months into a project (especially a studio project) you know that many of the decisions that are going to be made involve other parties. The often cited differences because of “creative issues” is just another manner of saying – I couldn’t get what I wanted and therefore I don’t need to put up with this B.S. In time we’ll know more about the reasons why he left but for now the director of One Hour Photo has another project with Universal (which may go down the tubes – if this departure wasn’t mutual).
A Cold Case would potentially be his next project. It concerns Gotham District Attorney’s chief
investigator Andy Rosenzweig (Tom Hanks attached). Before he retires, he vows to solve the
27-year-old murder of a friend, even though the case couldn’t be colder. It is a
crime that has haunted him his entire career.
The Wolf Man is still on track for a March shoot – this is a new version of its horror classic, and like the
1941 original that starred Lon Chaney Jr., the new film will be set in Victorian
England. Del Toro will play a man who returns from America to his ancestral
homeland, gets bitten by a werewolf and begins a hairy moonlight existence. Anthony Hopkins will play the title character’s father and Emily Blunt to play the female lead.
