'The Wolfman' Picks Up the Coveted R Rating

Thursday

10Dec2009

'The Wolfman' Picks Up the Coveted R Rating

Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 7:01AM

This is probably the best news we could get for The Wolfman at this point: "Rated R for bloody horror violence and gore." I don't know how much interest that can generate on its own, but any port in a storm, or so they say.

Now here's the deal: This thing could still be pretty good. The cast is uniformly strong, with Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving, and it's such a great story that if they get the effects lined up, there's a chance.

The problem is we've heard so much about this over the past 18 months, and almost none of it has reinforced the positive. We've had a change at director, a delay from April to November to February, CGI so bad that whole aspect of the movie was basically redone, and very recently, a firing-hiring of editors. That is a lot of upheaval for any studio movie, especially one that has been viewed as a possible linchpin for Universal to re-introduce so many of its classic monster movies.

I wonder if the R rating was in the works all along or if, somewhere along the way, the studio decided to push this one down a more intense, gruesome road. If that's what happened, it probably took form when the effects were punched up this summer. There were some re-shoots, too, at the same time, although back in July the assumption was that the re-shoots were to accommodate the effects. Of course by that time, the film had already been shoved from one release date so trouble was already brewing.

The smartest part of all of this for Universal is that if you look around at the early 2010 landscape, the trend is away from PG-13 thrillers and horror. So at least it can compete on a more level playing field with the other films in and around its genre. Plus, it does have that name going for it.

Colin Boyd |

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Anthony Hopkins,

Benicio Del Toro,

Emily Blunt,

Hugo Weaving,

Monster Movies,

Wolf Man |

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