The First Makeup Test for Wolf Man Scared Everyone - Even the Crew
Writer/director Leigh Whannell shares the chilling story around Chris Abbott's makeup reveal.
Every director who decides to undertake a new interpretation of a Universal Monster story is ultimately thinking: "How do I make this iconic monster's story feel vital and original again?"
Writer/director Leigh Whannell faced that very conundrum when he was offered the opportunity to make a new standalone Wolf Man movie for Universal Pictures, especially after his success with reimagining another Universal Monster movie, The Invisible Man (2020).
"I feel like there's been so many versions of the Wolf Man, and of werewolf characters," Whannell told an audience (including SYFY WIRE) recently at a Los Angeles screening for his Wolf Man, in theaters now (get tickets here!). "I don't even know if the film was worth making for me, unless I could find a different perspective, or a different way to tell the story.
"It's been done recently with Benicio del Toro," Whannell said of director Joe Johnston's 2010 The Wolfman, now streaming on Peacock. "And I knew what I didn't want to do, and that's where I started."
In Whannell's take, the terrible transformation of a human into a feral animal is an intimate one of deep loss, as the film follows a city-based family who moves to rural Oregon for the summer to reconnect without outside distractions. As soon as they arrive at their family farm, dad Blake (Christopher Abbott), his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), encounter a creature that turns their life upside down.
Leigh Whannell on Wolf Man's first terrifying makeup test
In any werewolf movie, the physical transformation is a big part of what audiences show up to witness. For Whannell, he knew the intimate scope of his story would necessitate a physical special effects process for Abbott, who slowly evolves into a werewolf after a surprise bite from a creature in the woods.
"My approach was just to make it as grounded as possible, to treat [lycanthropy] like a disease," Whannell said of the reasoning behind the transformation. "Don't go into the occult or the supernatural too much, but keep it more like David Cronenberg's film, The Fly. Also, the idea of seeing this transformation from the perspective of the person transforming, and the way you could play with sound design and with visuals, if you were seeing it through his eyes."
Abbott is the sole character representing that transformation in Wolf Man, and Whannell said that the actor came into the casting conversation pretty early.
"I don't really write with actors in mind," he shared about his process. "Usually when I'm writing, I'm just concentrating on the story, and I kind of have these faces in my mind, but I'm not thinking, 'I'm writing the film for this actor.' When you finish and the film's heading towards production, people start throwing names at you. Christopher Abbott was one that came up very early, and I was a fan of his. I love what he does. He seems to be a really egoless actor. He doesn't care about how he looks, or being in the latest superhero franchise, or whatever. He's a true artist. You get that from his work and so he was always in the mix."
Eventually cast as Blake, it wasn't until pre-production that anyone got to see the actor in the fully transformed make-up by creature effects designer Arjen Tuiten.
"The first time we did a makeup test, we're all gathered around in this room and everyone's standing around," Whannell remembered. "We've got all the lights set up... everyone's chatting, they're on their phones, and then he walks in... silence. Everyone just goes quiet. Chris walks in front of the camera and didn't say hi to anybody. He's just staring into the camera, in the full makeup. Everyone was like, 'Whoa.' It was a great moment!"
Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man is in theaters now. Tickets are on sale right here!
