Mark Romanek leaves WOLF MAN

From AICN, Hopefully we'll get some comment directly from Romanek in the immediate future, but in the meantime... holy crap! He left WOLF MAN!

I just posted that NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake story where I talk about it needing to have an interesting screenwriter and director to make me shake the bad feeling I had about remaking that film. It's projects like WOLF MAN why I don't have an automatic knee-jerk to remakes.

The original WOLF MAN is my favorite Universal Monster movie. I don't know why... I know I love CREATURE, the first three FRANKENSTEINS and the INVISIBLE MAN, too (never much of a Dracula fan), but Wolf Man was always my favorite.

You have a really damn good script by Andrew Kevin Walker, an interesting director like Mark Romanek and a great cast centered by the inspired casting of Benicio Del Toro as the title character. He was backed up by Anthony Hopkins (who plays his father... and after reading the script... I'd kill to see Hopkins play this character) and Emily Blunt (as his love interest, I'd assume). Add in Rick Baker coming back to the werewolf designing the Wolf Man and you have a geek boner of enormous proportions.

But now the word is he walked because of creative differences and a fight over the budget, already at $85 million (with another $15 million worth of tax incentives for shooting in the UK). I feel there's more to it than that. Romanek isn't exactly known for out of control budgets. Hopefully we'll find out more, but right now Universal's in an awkward position. I want to see that cast in this movie, but they must find a great director and not plug in a bland nobody. Romanek was an interesting pick and I think the movie hurts for him leaving.

If this doesn't happen, this project will go down as one of the biggest missed opportunities in cinema history.