Somebody at a site called *Vampire* Film Festival writes an article trying to convince people werewolves won't be a big deal. What a shock....

In truth, it comes down to the quality of the story. What nearly killed werewolf films in the 80's and 90's was the influx of badly written, poorly directed, and horrifically produced products that ultimately failed epically, and for nearly 20 years cast the werewolf genre into the cheapo bargain bin section.

I disagree with the author though. If GOOD werewolf films are produced, people will keep on coming, and the studio will keep producing them. I agree that werewolves, thanks largely to the Underworld series and Twilight (more on Twilight though) have brought the ancient mythological creature to light, and because the werewolf is suddenly the hero, people want to see heroic werewolves.

I give the author a bit of credit, but the reality he doesn't really know werewolves...

History, from antiquity to now, is full of both the constitutional werewolf (a man who is cursed to become a wolf) and unconstitutional werewolves ( a man who chooses to become a wolf) and both can be savage or noble. In fact in 12th century France, the noble werewolf was the craze... This is the time period where great epics like, Bisclavret, Melion, King Aurthor and Gorlagon, and Guilluame de Palerne, were written. Each of these tells the tale of a man, who was transformed into a wolf, but used his inner humanity, to ultimately find a way to break the spell.

The truth is, werewolf lore has ALWAYS been popular, and it has always gone through cycles... Today is no different.

While werewolf films tend to be more expensive, the reality is it is a LOT cheaper than it use to be. Rise of the Lycans of which made use of extensive CGI shots, was still filmed for around $50 million. New Moon featured high quality CGI giant wolves and it still cost only $50 million. Ten years ago, that same CGI, would have cost well over 80 to 90 million dollars, but things have become cheaper. In short you can get a good quality product without the nightmarish costs of yore.

Again though, it all comes down to STORY.

As for boosting werewolf popularity...

A friend of mine is producing, "Guardians of Luna". It is an anime series, featuring werewolves as main characters.


As a screenwriter, myself, I've delved into the world of werewolves and have two different projects that are being marketed at this time....
"The Wolf Prince" Fantasy/Adventure/Animation
"Hour of Darkness" Fantasy/Action/Adventure/Horror

All three projects listed above depict werewolves in a noble heroic fashion. We're going to make sure werewolves will leave several nasty marks on those dirty vampires.

alphanubilus wrote:

In truth, it comes down to the quality of the story. What nearly killed werewolf films in the 80's and 90's was the influx of badly written, poorly directed, and horrifically produced products that ultimately failed epically, and for nearly 20 years cast the werewolf genre into the cheapo bargain bin section.

I disagree with the author though. If GOOD werewolf films are produced, people will keep on coming, and the studio will keep producing them. I agree that werewolves, thanks largely to the Underworld series and Twilight (more on Twilight though) have brought the ancient mythological creature to light, and because the werewolf is suddenly the hero, people want to see heroic werewolves.

I give the author a bit of credit, but the reality he doesn't really know werewolves...

History, from antiquity to now, is full of both the constitutional werewolf (a man who is cursed to become a wolf) and unconstitutional werewolves ( a man who chooses to become a wolf) and both can be savage or noble. In fact in 12th century France, the noble werewolf was the craze... This is the time period where great epics like, Bisclavret, Melion, King Aurthor and Gorlagon, and Guilluame de Palerne, were written. Each of these tells the tale of a man, who was transformed into a wolf, but used his inner humanity, to ultimately find a way to break the spell.

The truth is, werewolf lore has ALWAYS been popular, and it has always gone through cycles... Today is no different.

While werewolf films tend to be more expensive, the reality is it is a LOT cheaper than it use to be. Rise of the Lycans of which made use of extensive CGI shots, was still filmed for around $50 million. New Moon featured high quality CGI giant wolves and it still cost only $50 million. Ten years ago, that same CGI, would have cost well over 80 to 90 million dollars, but things have become cheaper. In short you can get a good quality product without the nightmarish costs of yore.

Again though, it all comes down to STORY.

As for boosting werewolf popularity...

A friend of mine is producing, "Guardians of Luna". It is an anime series, featuring werewolves as main characters.


As a screenwriter, myself, I've delved into the world of werewolves and have two different projects that are being marketed at this time....
"The Wolf Prince" Fantasy/Adventure/Animation
"Hour of Darkness" Fantasy/Action/Adventure/Horror

All three projects listed above depict werewolves in a noble heroic fashion. We're going to make sure werewolves will leave several nasty marks on those dirty vampires.

Ummmm 50 million's a lot of money. Some of the best vampire movies have been made for under 15 mill.  But i guess back then that was expensive so....

You scripts sound rad so keep us posted!!!! There's less than a handful of werewolf anime  out there

ArcLight wrote:

Somebody at a site called *Vampire* Film Festival writes an article trying to convince people werewolves won't be a big deal. What a shock....

My thoughts exactly.

Well, there are some interesting thing in the article, and the pesimistic side of me agrees on many of its parts. But he has forgotten that some of his arguments could be applied also to vampire movies. And also something about the budget: I don't know if any of you have had some experience with fx... neither do I, but I have some experience with engineering costs, and I can tell you that the fx needed to create some decent are not that expensive. You can design and create a set of animatronics for less than 1M$. And the makeup and prosthetics are even cheaper.

And if you just have some thousands of dollars, you can still create something decent with unknown actors, amateur crew and homemade effects, if you have the decision and the will to for just "for the art" and not for the money .

When we look beyond the fact that the author of that "article" was severely grammar handicapped (I know, pot calling kettle *p*), and that very few if any fact reseach went into it, he makes a valid point by essentially boiling down werewolves to only two types.

The rich variety with which the werewolf mythos is explored, twisted or simply had fun with in literature, gets barely reflected in Hollywood script writing, if you want a original story you have to relay on the occassional indie production, but those often struggle with painful bad attempts at recreating Hollywood style morph FX, playing up their weaknesses instead of concentrating on their strengths.

Last edited by Daninsky (2010-01-15 10:57:45)

Daninsky wrote:

When we look beyond the fact that the author of that "article" was severely grammar handicapped (I know, pot calling kettle *p*), and that very few if any fact reseach went into it, he makes a valid point by essentially boiling down werewolves to only two types.

The rich variety with which the werewolf mythos is explored, twisted or simply had fun with in literature, gets barely reflected in Hollywood script writing, if you want a original story you have to relay on the occassional indie production, but those often struggle with painful bad attempts at recreating Hollywood style morph FX, playing up their weaknesses instead of concentrating on their strengths.

Uh hem...

As stated...

"Guardians of Luna" of which will be an anime series featuring werewolves will start production sometime this year.

We are currently marking "The Wolf Prince" of which is loosely based upon several 12th century French Lais, and then given a little big of an extra punch...

Then "Hour of Darkness" in the middle of completely rebuilding the entire story from scracth. This one should be up on market within the next two to three months. If I have my way with this script, it will be the next "Avatar". It has a very strong, original story, as with WP, that will take werewolves hopefully to the next level.

WereWolfH wrote:

Daninsky wrote:

Only skimmed the article yet, but so far I'm bound to agree with the author.
Without a serious influx of more talented screen writers I doubt werewolves to be the next big thing anytime now or in the future, there's just too few variation in the genre and the people that kept vampire movies alive (*giggle*) are the independents that shoot zombie & vampire flicks on shoestring budget, werewolf movies do have a huge disadvantage over those genres: the (more expensive) need for at least semi convincing FX in order to appeal beyond the limited number of die-hard fans.

I gotta disagree somewhat with the script. There have been a lot of great werewolf movies as far as the storyline but maybe the direction of it (or should i say acting) got cheesy. For me a lot of times the cheesy werewolf makeup, costume, mask, etc made the movie crap.

I agree with this. Skinwalkers started off awesome and got stupid by the end. (With everyone dying dumb) And the makeup, I only liked the females face. Didn't care for the bodies part. It didn't look real.

Ummmm this article isn't valid b/c check out this mtv article that pretty much says we're gonna get more werewolf type movies b/c of the popularity of Twilight.   http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/09/30/sh … t-success/

The only big movie about werewolves on these looong years is The Wolfman. Others just were action movies with werewolves (Dog Soldiers), sword and sorcery (van helsing) or vampire movies (New Moon), so don't you get wrong.

alphanubilus wrote:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/the-return-of-the-werewolf-1891762.html

Actually the interest in werewolves and werewolves alone, is growing. My good friend, and acclaimed paranormal writer, Brad Steiger, is getting tons of interviews both here in the US and abroad, with the very question of the future of werewolves...

How long it will last, will all depend on the quality of the products produced.

Totally agree with you. I am just a bit disappointed about this last year, that supposed to be the "werewolf year", and finally nothing really remarkable happened, save for two or three low budget interesting shots and one fabulous series...

alphanubilus wrote:

In truth, it comes down to the quality of the story. What nearly killed werewolf films in the 80's and 90's was the influx of badly written, poorly directed, and horrifically produced products that ultimately failed epically, and for nearly 20 years cast the werewolf genre into the cheapo bargain bin section.

I completely agree. The article makes a couple of good points, but when it comes down to it, it only takes one really good flick to start the craze and a really crummy flick to end it. If The Wolfman is good (and does well), people are more likely to be excited about werewolves again. If it sucks, that'll kill it and it'll be back to B movies for werewolves.

Twilight is an interesting exception for vampires. The books tapped into that same successful vein Harry Potter did: a strong young adult following with a solid adult crossover audience. I also agree with the comment above that it's not necessarily a vampire series; it's a YA romance that happens to have vampires. Has it resulted in a ton of vampire flicks appearing? At least with wide theatrical releases and strong studio support? Not really. After 30 Days of Night tanked, there's what? Daybreakers? Another that didn't do so hot.

One more thing to keep in mind: if The Wolfman and Teen Wolf are the two big werewolf flicks of the year, they're more likely the result of the studios trying to cash in on the remake craze. In that respect, they're no different from Transformers, GI Joe, The A-Team, and The Karate Kid.

Mike