Wolf Man reboot delayed, bumping The Woman in the Yard off Universal schedule

Blumhouse Productions and The Invisible Man (2020) director Leigh Whannell are bringing us another reboot of a classic Universal Pictures property with Wolf Man, which had the perfect release date: October 25th, delivering werewolf action to the big screen just in time for Halloween. But Wolf Man only just started filming earlier this month, and the filmmakers clearly feel that they need more than seven months to get it ready for theatres. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Wolf Man‘s release has been delayed, pushed back to January 17, 2025. The studio already had another Blumhouse project scheduled for a January 10th release, the Jaume Collet-Serra / Danielle Deadwyler thriller The Woman in the Yard… but with Wolf Man moving to January, The Woman in the Yard has been bumped off the schedule entirely. We’ll have to wait and see when Universal will decide to release that one.

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. (Blum also happens to be married to Blumhouse founder Jason Blum.) 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.

The leads of the film 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 must be playing his wife, because her character is described as being a mother whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Their characters seem to have a 10 year old daughter named Ginger, as a casting call for that character was sent out a while 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 Woman in the Yard has been written by Sam Stefanak, who was previously a staff writer and story editor on the Netflix animated series F Is for Family, but details on the story are being kept under wraps. Blumhouse founder Jason Blum told Variety that he has been looking for the right project to do with Collet-Serra for over a decade. He said, “The Woman in the Yard is the perfect match, a film that’s ambitious in scope but modest in budget that combines Jaume’s vision with the incomparable Danielle Deadwyler.“

Blum and Stephanie Allain are producing the film, while Collet-Serra and Deadwyler executive produce alongside Gabrielle Ebron, Scott Greenberg, and James Mora.

The Woman in the Yard got its January release date only after Universal moved Blumhouse’s M3GAN 2.0 from January 17th to May 16th.

What do you think of Wolf Man moving from October to January, bumping The Woman in the Yard off the schedule completely? Let us know by leaving a comment below.