Jason Blum put a silver bullet in his reaction to Wolf Man‘s box office. Blum, a producer on the Leigh Whannell-directed reboot, broke his silence on the film’s underperformance when he posted — and then deleted — a meme to his social media. “Me thinking about Wolfman grosses right now,” the Blumhouse founder posted along with a photo of himself frowning on X (formerly Twitter).
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See the since-deleted tweet below.
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Wolf Man, starring Christopher Abbott in the title role and Julia Garner as his terrorized wife, opened in third place on Jan. 17. The film opened below expectations with $10.8 million, behind Mufasa: The Lion King in its fifth week and the Keke Palmer-SZA comedy One of Them Days. Wolf Man‘s worldwide gross is currently $28 million.
In its second week, the Universal Monsters movie dropped 70% and fell to seventh place, defanged by poor reviews from critics and a worse C- grade from audiences polled by CinemaScore. To compare, Whannell’s previous films for Blumhouse, 2015’s Insidious: Chapter 3 and 2020’s The Invisible Man, were better received with a matching B+ grade. (Whannell’s 2018 film Upgrade wasn’t polled.)
Universal’s prior attempt at remaking The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro as the classic movie monster Lawrence Talbot, received a C+ grade in 2010 but fared worse with critics: that film was scored 32% “rotten” on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, whereas 2025’s Wolf Man received a still-rotten 53%.
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Whannell’s followup to his previous reboot, the Elisabeth Moss-starring Invisible Man, has so far performed worse by every metric. That modernized reimagining of the 1933 film was a hit with critics at 91% “certified fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes and went on to gross $145 million at the global box office against a budget of just $7 million.
Wolf Man — which has been in various stages of development since 2014, including the version that would have starred Ryan Gosling — carries a $25 million price tag. That’s on the more expensive side for Blumhouse, which typically eschews bigger budgets for more modestly-priced films like 2017’s Happy Death Day ($5 million), 2018’s Halloween ($10 million), 2021’s The Black Phone ($16 million), and 2022’s M3GAN ($12 million).
“2025’s Wolf Man follows in the footsteps of its predecessors by seeing Blake become said Wolf Man, thanks to receiving a debilitating scratch on his arm,” reads an excerpt from Evan Valentine’s 2-star (out of 5) review for ComicBook. “There are glimpses of brilliance in Blake’s transformation here and there, whether it be from how his new sense of hearing emerges or how the transformation itself makes it feel as though Blake is literally being dragged into a different world from those around him. These ideas fall to the wayside in a by-the-numbers affair that simply never makes good on what could have been.”
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Image courtesy of Sony Pictures
