The next classic story Leigh Whannell would like to update: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Back in 2020, director Leigh Whannell brought the world a well-received modern update of the classic Universal property The Invisible Man. On January 17, 2025, Universal will be releasing Whannell’s take on another classic Universal property, Wolf Man. There aren’t any plans in place for Whannell to continue making new versions of the Universal Monsters – but, if he were to given his pick of which character(s) to resurrect next, he has said that he would go with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Robert Louis Stevenson created the characters of Jekyll and Hyde in his 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which depicts the gripping struggle of two opposing personalities — one essentially good, the other evil — for the soul of one man. The story has received many cinematic adaptations over the years, with one being a 26 minute short film that was released in 1913 and came from companies that would eventually become known as Universal Pictures. Surprisingly, the only Jekyll and Hyde feature from Universal is 1953’s Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where Jekyll was played by Boris Karloff and Hyde by an uncredited Eddie Parker. Russell Crowe later had the chance to play the character(s) in the 2017 version of The Mummy.

When Screen Rant asked Whannell which monster he’d like to take on next, he replied, “I’ve always thought Jekyll and Hyde. That book, when I was a kid, really creeped me out, the concept of it. Of all the monsters, that one used to really stay with me. There’s something about the hero and the villain being the same person. I think it would be a really good modern version of Jekyll and Hyde. I don’t know exactly what it would be.“

If Wolf Man turns out to be a hit in January, maybe Universal will hire Whannell to get to work on a new Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story.

The leads of his version of Wolf Man are Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner, both of whom were in the 2011 film Martha Marcy May Marlene. Abbott is taking on the role of a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Garner is playing his wife. Sam Jaeger is also in the cast, along with child actress Matilda Firth, playing a character named Ginger: “Female, 10 years old, white. Blake and Charlotte’s daughter. Smart, precocious, and strong. When her family decides to leave the city for a quieter life in a remote area, she faces her biggest fear, the possibility of losing one or both of her parents forever.”

When Wolf Man was first announced in 2020, Ryan Gosling was set to star in it – and in fact, it got rolling when Gosling pitched this take on the concept of The Wolf Man to Universal, and his idea was then fleshed out into a screenplay by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, a writing duo that previously worked on Orange Is the New Black. At the time, it was said the story was “believed to be set in present times and in the vein of Jake Gyllenhaal’s thriller Nightcrawler with an obvious supernatural twist.” The final version of the script is credited to Blum and Angelo, as well as Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck.

Whannell first signed on to direct the film in 2020, but dropped out the following year. That’s when Gosling’s Blue Valentine and Place Beyond the Pines director Derek Cianfrance came on board. Gosling and Cianfrance both stepped away from Wolf Man early last year… and then Whannell came back. A collaboration between Blumhouse and Motel Movies, Wolf Man is being produced by Jason Blum. Gosling receives an executive producer credit alongside Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner, and Whannell.

The Wolf Man reboot was recently given an R rating for bloody violent content, grisly images and some language. This isn’t the first time a reboot of The Wolf Man has been given an R rating, as the 2010 reboot that was directed by Joe Johnston and starred Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt was also rated R, for bloody horror violence and gore.

Are you looking forward to Wolf Man, and would you like to see Whannell make a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.