Genre: Horror/Adventure
Premise: A former Hawaiian warrior turned werewolf is recruited to join a mysterious pack of werewolves.
About: It appears that Aaron Guzikowski really likes wolves. He created the show, Raised by Wolves. And it turns out, during the planned Monsterverse slate of horror movies, he wrote a draft of The Wolfman. Afterwards, Ryan Gosling would come to Universal and pitch his own version of The Wolfman, which had a Christopher Nolan approach to the property whereby he would treat it very realistically. “Nightcrawler” was given as a tonal comp. Yesterday’s writers, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, would go on to write that draft for Gosling. To be clear, today’s draft was written by Aaron Guizikowski (Prisoners, Raised by Wolves, Papillon).
Writer: Aaron Guizikowski
Details: 120 pages
Wolf Week continues here on Scriptshadow.
Monday, we looked at the classic horror film, An American Werewolf In London. Tuesday, we had that Big Mean Orange-Haired Wolf. And today, we have a reimagining of the classic film, The Wolfman.
So, as those who read my newsletter know (e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to sign up), our first Monsterverse script, for Van Helsing, turned out to be pretty awesome! And so, can a full moon strike twice in the same month? I thought that was impossible.
Or, wait. A full moon actually stays full for two nights, right? So maybe it can strike twice! Unless the second night of the full moon is only like a 95% full moon. In that case, it’s not a real full moon. And since I don’t know much about werewolf mythology, I don’t know how much of an effect that has on werewolf changism. Is a 95% werewolf still a werewolf. Or is just a werewol?
The year is 1826. We’re on Molokai Island, Hawaii (I’m guessing they were targeting The Rock or Jason Mamoa for the role). The prince of this land, Deo Kekoa, is hanging with his homies when a fiery ship sails right up to the beach.
Deo and others try to break through the hull where they hear people screaming. But when they finally succeed, they’re attacked… by a werewolf. Deo is able to kill it but, unfortunately, he’s been bitten. And since his father has seen werewolves before, he knows Deo will turn into one. So he banishes Deo.
We then wake up in 2017 in Iceland, where Deo is now a bodyguard for high-profile clients. Over the years, Deo has learned how to turn into a werewolf on command. Unfortuantely, he still has no control over his true turning, which happens every full moon.
Deo is responsible for guarding a businessman named Edmund Razmus, who works for something called the “Frankenstein” Corporation. He takes Edmund out into the middle of nowhere in order to truly isolate them from threats but it isn’t long before a group of werewolves attack and kill Edmund. Deo does some research on these werewolves and learns that they live in Hamburg, Germany. So off he goes.
Once there, he meets with the alpha of the group, a steely wise businessman named Jacques Delancre, a billionaire shipper. Also, Deo realizes, Delancre is the man who owned the fiery ship that crashed on his shores that day.
At first, Deo wants to kill him. But there’s something magnetic about Delancre that Deo has never experienced before and he soon finds himself curious about this wolf pack. For so long, he’s been alone. It feels good to finally have a family. Delacre teaches Deo to stop resisting his animalistic urges and, instead, embrace them. He wants Deo to be more wolf than man.
The next thing you know Deo is helping Delancre with a heist. The Frankenstein Corp has a lab in the Swiss Alps and they’re doing tests on a former member of the pack. Because Deo has the special ability to turn into a werewolf whenever he wants, Delancre needs him for this rescue mission. Deo agrees, but in the process, worries about if he’s being seduced for, ultimately, nefarious purposes.
Um.
This script is awesome.
I mean, I don’t know what’s going on over at Universal. But they’ve gotten two of the best big-budget scripts I’ve read in a long time and they’re not going to do anything with them. It baffles me.
Cause this was a really cool script.
There were four things that stood out. One, the mythology. It’s really well-researched and constructed. Every werewolf here has a deep backstory as they come from a different time period and different part of the world. And the stuff about the Wolfpack and who it operated was really cool. Two, the specificity. We start off on a gold-caped Hawaiin prince in the year 1826. I’ve never seen that before in film. When someone can give me that level of detail and uniqueness right away, the script that follows is almost always good.
The originality is strong as well. Going from 19th century Hawaii to 21st century Iceland. It feels like we’re in a totally different world than we’d usually be in with movies like this. 9 out of 10 writers would’ve started this movie in New York.
Finally, the way the story is constructed is really smart. It starts off with this 20 minute teaser. Then we move to a bodyguard story, where our hero has to protect someone. Then we move to a Matrix situation, where our hero joins this cult of werewolves and learns about their pack and powers. And then we’re performing a heist in Switzerland.
It was just really freaking cool!
You know what it felt like in a weird way? Like a werewolf version of James Bond, if that makes sense. And I would’ve never in a million years thought of combining those two worlds for a werewolf film. Yet here we are and Guzikowski hits it out of the park.
You guys know how much I love when I can’t predict what’s going to happen in a script. The problem I always run into when I finally encounter one of these scripts, is that the only reason I can’t predict anything is because the script is so sloppily written and the writer is making things up on the fly. Rarely do I encounter a screenplay where I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen ANNNNND what happens is still smart and calculated. Which is exactly how I would describe this script.
So you’re probably thinking to yourself, if this is so good, why didn’t they make it, Carson? This is where we get into how complicated Hollywood is today. Cause I think almost every genuinely good script has been made in Hollywood. Cream eventually rises to the top.
But we’re in a whole different era these days with all these extra factors in play. Nobody had done the interconnected “Universe” approach on a large scale before Marvel. So this was brand new territory. And the combination of The Mummy doing badly combined with The Invisible Man being a breakout hit changed the course of how Universal approached its monsterverse.
Big-budget was out. Low-budget was in. It’s why we’re going to get a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman. And I’ll be honest, I think a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman could be awesome. It just sucks that this movie is going to be left behind.
With that said, everything is cyclical. There will be a time in Universal’s future where big-budget monster movies make sense again. When that happens, they’re going to want to bring this script, and Van Helsing, back out, and make them. Cause these are really good screenplays. And it’d be a shame if nothing ever came of them.
Screenplay Link: The Wolfman
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A preview of one of my dialogue tips from the book. If you’re going to have people speak in a foreign language, yet present the dialogue in English, it’s imperative that you italicize the dialogue. If not, you’ll create a situation like the opening of today’s script where Deo seems to be speaking in English. And I’m thinking, “How does he know English?” The writer then tells us, in the description, that he’s speaking his local language and a translator is translating it. Problem solved right? No. Because as I continue to read Deo’s dialogue, I’m still seeing it as English and have to adjust, remembering he’s speaking in a different language. It’s an annoying hesitation-correction that occurs every time you read the dialogue. That visual cue of the italics immediately alerts the reader that it’s another language. Problem solved.
