Louis Morneau Hired For WEREWOLF - Universal's The Wolf Man Spin-Off!

Casting begins soon on the studio's almost certainly straight-to-video reboot of the hairy beast.

By Tom Ryan /

Moviehole says Universal has hired Louis Morneau, director of Joy Ride 2, Carnosaur 2 and Bats (no we weren't aware of them either) to helm the latest reboot of their classic movie monster 'The Wolf Man'. The new movie, currently titled Werewolf is being penned by Michael Tabb (writer of this forgotten €˜gem€™) and that we were told last month €˜shares a link€™ to the original George Waggner 1941 black and white classic The Wolf Man. Famously brought to life in 1941 by actor Lon Chaney Jr, the Wolf Man quickly became one of Universal's best loved horror icons alongside Kaloff's Frankenstein and Lugosi's Dracula. Chaney Jr played the character for many years in several sequels and spin offs. In 2003, Universal attempted to revive all these characters in the dreadful Van Helsing. The movie was a domestic bomb and the studio learned that they needed to put these characters back in the horror genre they belonged in, and not some campy summer blockbuster with Wolverine. In 2010 they releasedThe Wolfman, a reboot of the 1941 movie, directed by Joe Johnston and starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. The film suffered from studio interference, script rewrites, reshoots and delays, and was even more financially disastrous. Determined to get these classic characters back on screens, Universal are trying once more to reboot the character, unfortunately hiring a hired hand director like Morneau does not seem like the right way to go about it. It also makes you wonder (and it's something we have already mused) if they are even bothering trying to release this film theatrically seeing as how Morneau is more familiar with straight to DVD films. It's a downright shame that the studio really don't know what to do with their horror icons and just relegates them to bottom shelf nonsense like this.