Interview: Lowell Dean on ‘Another Wolfcop’

A trip to your local Walmart might yield a first look at the Blu-ray for Another WolfCop, Lowell Dean’s sequel to his cult-favorite film about a borderline-incompetent police officer who gets significantly better at his job after he’s turned into a werewolf.

The film ups the ante, with more violence, more supernatural crazy, and more…Kevin Smith as a mayor? What?

Dean joined ComicBook.com for a quick Q&A about the film, his plans for the franchise, and more.

Was this always planned as a franchise, or did the sequel kind of sneak up on you?

There was never a guarantee that we’d do a sequel, but after the producers saw the first one, they said, “Do you want to do another one?” Of course, I said yes, so we rolled right into it. It felt like one long movie.

I was always thinking sequel, because when we actually pitched WolfCop initially to the company, we said part of the reason they should take a risk on us was because this was the kind of character that you could make many sequels out of, if it went right. We knew we had to be ready, so we had ideas. That said, it still took like a year and a half to get the sequel into production.

Over that time, there was many changes to the script, input from producers, reactions from audiences. The second one kind of became like a juggling act of what I wanted to see in the sequel, what the producers wanted me to do, and trying to make something that the audience would want and expect. It was fun. It was, I think, a little more weirdly pure than the first film. The first film is almost a little serious off the top, and then once he becomes WolfCop, it hits the ground running and get chaotic. I kind of feel like the second film, in a weird way, is just like a continuation of the first film, but it’s just keeping the crazy energy of the second half.

These films have a very particular tone that works for them. Was it tough to nail that down?

I was a little nervous for the first film, when I started watching it with audiences. I’m like, “Oh God, I hope I don’t lose them, because we are kind of serious in these first 30 minutes.” Again, I think if you don’t lay the ground work, and if you don’t set the mythology, and if you don’t have the characters that people care about, then it’s just a bunch of silliness and blood splashing against the wall. I kind of think you have to earn it. I always felt like WolfCop, in a weird, messed up way, is like a superhero. He was like my own superhero. Even when it gets really silly, I still want you to give a shit about him.

Everyone wants sequels to get bigger, but with the budgetary limitations of a film like this is “bigger” a liability?

I was nervous about the scope of the sequel. I knew that we’d still be a very independent film, and we might not have much more money. We ended up having a bigger budget, almost double I’d say, but we still had the same amount of time. Time is a huge thing on these films, especially with practical effects. Both films, one and two, were shot in 17 days. We had to make a film that looked and felt twice as big, in my opinion, because again, just rolling through the same-sized action sequences in 17 days, so it took a lot of scheduling, and planning, and storyboarding.

It was still very scary, but I think we pulled it off and made it feel bigger. It’s still not big enough for what I wanted, but I know the reality of the playground I’m in, for a movie at this budget level. When you’re making a movie called WolfCop in 17 days, you just kind of throw everything against the wall and try and make it as big as you can. Of course, I dreamed of bigger WolfCop action scenes, and him in a helicopter shooting someone down, and things like that. We’ll see, maybe we’ll grow to that point.

So what you’re saying is we need a WolfCop comic. On the page, you don’t have to worry about budget.

Yes, 100%. We actually did a limited run WolfCop comic, where he did get to do some bigger stuff. It’s pretty cool. You should definitely seek it out. It’s like three issues only, but I want more WolfCop comics. I want him doing much bigger things.

With that said, I am first and foremost a filmmaker. I want to physically see him on the screen too. I think it’s the kind of character that I hope becomes iconic enough that he should live in both worlds, because I want him doing crazy adventures. I’d see him on a space station at some point. I think he can go anywhere. The fun of him and the fun of his name means you can take it with a wink sometimes, but also I take him deadly serious. I want to get to the core of the character too.

Where Did WolfCop come from as a concept?

the character itself was born out of when I was a kid around age eight, I was obsessed with Teen Wolf. I would dress up like Teen Wolf. I loved Teen Wolf. Cut to 20 years later, and the best werewolf movie in theaters is Twilight, and I’m like, “Whatever happened to Teen Wolf?” My pitch for it was Teen Wolf meets Bad Lieutenant, the first one, which I thought was so weird that hopefully it would intrigue people.

For the second film, I had serious tonal influences, like the images that were on my board, my mood board, were Gremlins, Slapshot, Strange Brew, and Lethal Weapon. I felt like if you put those four in like a bag and shook it up and added WolfCop, that would be this movie. It’s kind of chaotic, kind of Christmasy, full of creatures, but also about partners and cops.

We’ve had a million werewolf movies and cop movies. To me, what I thought was going to be the fun twist was exactly what you said. It’s usually, “I’m a monster. I’m in the shadows. I’m doing this.” I thought, “What if a werewolf stepped into the light and was a hero? How messed up would that be? What if he still retains the fun things?” Up until Logan, I was pissed off that every time I’d see Wolverine in a movie, he’d use his claws to cut doors and robots. I was like, “When are you going to rip someone apart?”

I wanted to see someone with those kinds of powers step into the light, not maybe fully control them, but maybe control them enough, like a dog, where your owner or your chief could be like, “Don’t kill anybody who’s on our side.” That’s as far as you can go, and he’s off and he’s ripping apart things. He’s pulling off faces. To me, I hadn’t seen that movie before, and that’s what I got excited about, “Oh, a werewolf who’s actually good.” Maybe taking it a bit further, “A werewolf who’s actually better at his job when he’s a werewolf than when he’s a human.” I thought that was fun.