Universal casts Ryan Gosling as lead in ‘Wolfman’ film

Ryan Gosling appears to be set to lead the new Wolfman movie in development at Universal Pictures with Cory Finley (HBO’s Bad Education) as director.

Variety broke the news, projecting the film to be set in current day, with a dark tone, “in the vein of Jake Gyllenhaal’s thriller Nightcrawler, with an obvious supernatural twist.”

Finley will helm the project, from a script by Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum, based on a pitch from Gosling, who had initially considered directing the film himself.

“Gosling’s take fell in line with the studio’s new vision for its monster movies. Universal had originally planned on creating an interconnected universe with its vast catalog of monster IP,” Variety summarized. “However, the studio reassessed after The Mummy with Tom Cruise misfired, and decided to move forward with filmmaker-driven projects based on the monsters’ legacies, focusing on what made the characters endure over time. Instead of prescribing a mandate that the films be part of a larger scheme, Universal loosened those restrictions and open-sourced to filmmakers to create their own unique stories.”

There are no production dates and everything does appear to still be in flux.

“Besides the fact that Gosling himself would have to close a deal to star, he is also currently set to lead an untitled astronaut film at MGM. That movie, an adaptation of The Martian author Andy Weir’s upcoming novel, recently hired Phil Lord and Chris Miller to direct. By all accounts, that seems to Gosling’s next project.”