“The Wolfman” is like massive carwreck where you’re still finding debris days later. Yesterday, we ran down the details of Mark Romanek’s version of the film that director Joe Johnston worked with and today, it has been revealed that a portion Paul Haslinger’s scrapped score has hit the web.
As you might recall, Danny Elfman was hired, replaced by former Tangerine Dream member Haslinger, who was then fired and Elfman brought back in. It’s enough to make your head spin. Well, a portion of Haslinger’s scrapped score has hit the web and once again we have to ask (and forgive us, but seriously): what were they thinking?
In an interview with director Joe Johnston he pretty much outlines what we had assumed all along:
Danny [Elfman] had to score a film that was half an hour longer [than what the film is now]. And he had to score it very early. It was last summer, I think. He said, “This has happened to me before, and I know it’s going to happen now. You’re going to re-cut the film and my score isn’t going to work.” We re-cut the film, we put his score in. And what happened is he had themes he had spaced out and it worked great in his cut. When we took out that half hour, his themes were closer together. So things get familiar and you go, “Wait, I just heard that.” We previewed the film, we all recognized it didn’t work. But there was a reaction from someone high up at NBC/Universal, because a new trailer had been cut with the electronic score, someone said, “Hey, let’s do the whole film that way!” It was something I reacted to pretty violently. That’s the wrong idea, guys. They said they were going to try it. I had been so worn down, I said, “Okay, let’s try it.” They hired a guy who is a talented composer in his own right. They assigned him something that was almost impossible to do. When we put his music to the picture, even though the music was working, it was so out of context with what you were seeing.
Wisely, they ultimately went back to Elfman’s score which is entirely more appropriate. Have a listen to Haslinger’s music below. It’s pretty obvious why it didn’t work.
Paul Haslinger – Excerpt from the rejected “Wolfman” Score
This is pulled from the WOLFMAN official website. It's library/stock music.