Universal Gives Up On ‘The Wolfman’ & Lets The ‘R’-Rating Stand

According the folks over at /Film, the trouble plagued “The Wolfman” has been slapped with an R-rating for “bloody horror, violence and gore.” The odd thing about the announcement is that the news was sent to the website from an enthusiastic PR rep for the film. The way /Film and some other sites are positioning the news is that Universal is supporting Joe Johnston’s artistic vision (yeah, right), but just looking at the troubled production history of the film, we think Universal has had enough and are washing their hands of the whole enterprise.

As we previously reported, the legendary Walter Murch and Mark Goldblatt were brought in a couple of weeks ago to recut the picture and try and salvage what was supposed to Universal’s triumphant return to their franchise of monster movies. We can guess that Murch and Goldblatt don’t come cheap, and if its their cut that the MPAA has rated “R”, we doubt Universal is going reach deeper into their pockets, to have them sit in an editing room for another week or two to come up with a more financially friendly “PG-13” edit.

Just to refresh your memory, in addition to fresh editors, the film has gone under extensive reshoots, lost composer Danny Elfman (who they probably had to pay anyway), lost director Mark Romanek (again, who was probably paid), has had a good handful of release date bumps and worst of all, at the end of the day, has had fairly tame trailers and promo material to show for it. The film’s budget is easily nearing (or has already exceeded) $100 million and with Universal in the process of being sold, we don’t see them throwing any more cash down the sinkhole that this film has already created in their ledgers.

One only has to take a look at “Watchmen” to see how financially crippling an R-rating is to an expensive fanboy film. Conservatively speaking, let’s put the budget for that film at $130 million. Even then, the box office take in North America was a mere $107 million and only made cash when it went to foreign territories. “The Wolfman” is arriving with barely half of that film’s buzz, and a large portion of it has been cautious if not negative.

There is no way “The Wolfman” is going to come close to breaking even in its theatrical release, even with foreign markets factored in. For one thing, it’s opening on Valentine’s Day weekend, and will be up against date movie “Valentine’s Day” and the other geek movie, “The Lightning Thief.” What did “Watchmen” open up against? Right, nothing.

Big tentpole projects need a “PG-13” rating to bring in a bigger audience and of course, more cash. While “Watchmen” was always conceived as an R-rated film, you can bet that if Fox could have had their way, they would’ve released the film in a PG-13 cut in a heartbeat. As “The Dark Knight” proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, artistic integrity can find a common ground with studio expectations and fanboy desires, and knock it right out of the park.

By letting the “R” rating stand Universal has unofficially thrown in the towel on “The Wolfman.” They clearly don’t want to waste any more time in trying to figure out the right way to release this film, and are probably banking on it breaking even when it hits DVD and BluRay, probably in time for next Hallowe’en.