Blumhouse’s Wolf Man Replacing Ryan Gosling With Christopher Abbott

Shortly after his success with 2020’s The Invisible Man, director Leigh Whannell was tapped to revive the Wolf Man for Blumhouse Productions, which had Ryan Gosling on board to star. While Whannell would end up leaving the project, it looks like there’s another creative overhaul, as Gosling is leaving the project and Christopher Abbott is stepping in to star, as Whannell is once again confirmed to be helming the picture. The Hollywood Reporter not only confirmed the creative shakeups, but also revealed that the film is moving forward more substantially, as it has earned an October 25, 2024 release date.

In the wake of leaving the project, Whannell was replaced by Gosling’s former Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines collaborator Derek Cianfrance. In the three years since the project was announced, there have been few updates about the project, though development was obviously impacted not only by the coronavirus pandemic but also by this year’s actors’ and writers’ strikes. This update of creative shifts and earning a release date that’s only ten months away would imply the project could start shooting in the immediate future.

Abbott might not be a household name like Gosling, but has been scoring multiple acclaimed performances across multiple genres of indie film, such as in It Comes at Night and Possessor, with Abbott most recently appearing alongside Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things.

After the original The Wolf Man was released in 1941, the figure cemented himself as one of the iconic Universal Monsters. The most significant attempt to revive the property came with a straightforward reboot in 2010 starring Benicio del Toro, which was met with critical and financial disappointment.

Part of what made The Invisible Man such a hit was that, rather than a straightforward revival of the source material, Whannell found an unconventional approach to the material that embraced the spirit of its predecessors while also adding in a much more contemporary and frightening feel. When this new Wolf Man was announced, it was teased as being a similar embrace of the tone of the original movie while also reimagining the actual plot. That project teased that it would follow a character that would feel more like the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Nightcrawler, which focused on a nocturnal and ruthless cameraman who would do anything to catch captivating footage.

With Gosling set to earn an executive producer credit on the movie, it’s possible that it will share a lot of narrative DNA as those initial descriptions.

Wolf Man is slated to hit theaters on October 25, 2024.

Are you looking forward to the reboot? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!