This cannot be a good sign.  Buried in a Variety article about the editing process and the movie PRECIOUS is the tidbit that Universal's redux of THE WOLFMAN is about to go under the knife again, this time at the hands of editors Mark Goldblatt and Walter Murch.  Goldblatt is a frequent collaborator with Michael Bay, and is primarily an action film editor.  Murch is a frequent collaborator with Francis Ford Coppola, and primarily edits long, well-respected dramas.

 

Ok, so how are these two supposed to fit together, and what does this mean for THE WOLFMAN?

It means trouble.  Calling anyone in to re-edit a film which has already had a change in director and rumors about struggles between practical and digital effects creators means Universal thinks the storytelling is not up to par.  Calling in the guy who edited STARSHIP TROOPERS to work with the guy who edited THE ENGLISH PATIENT is a disaster waiting to happen.  This project has been nothing but troubled from the start, and re-editing it now only suggests further trouble, especially when the job's to be done by two men with highly contrasting styles.

There's a reason we don't eat peanut butter on steak.  The two just don't gel.  I can only hope that Goldblatt and Murch will be able to make some sense out of THE WOLFMAN's narrative, because Universal seems not to know what do to at this point.  Larry Talbot's story is a horror archetype, and it would be nice to see it get the remake it richly deserves.

Read the full article at Variety here.  Though the majority of it has nothing to do with horror, it's an interesting read.

--Phil Fasso