Leigh Whannell in talks to direct Ryan Gosling’s ‘Wolfman’ (update)

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EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures has set its Wolfman project on a fast track to production. Leigh Whannell is negotiating to direct Ryan Gosling in the lead role, and Jason Blum’s Blumhouse has boarded the picture to be producer along with Gosling. Blumhouse just teamed with Whannell on the Elizabeth Moss-starrer The Invisible Man, a $7 million budget film that was a win for Universal’s Classic Movie Monsters initiative, grossing $124 million worldwide.

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Months after Universal successfully relaunched its monster universe with Elisabeth Moss’s “The Invisible Man,” the studio is pushing ahead for “Wolfman” — which is being developed as a starring vehicle for Ryan Gosling — to be the next movie based on its catalog of iconic creatures.

Sources tell Variety that executives at Universal have been meeting with directors over the past month and could be making a decision soon on who will take the reins behind the camera. While there is no frontrunner at the time, Cory Finley, who recently received rave reviews for directing HBO’s drama “Bad Education with Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney, is said to be in the mix for the job.

It’s unknown what the new take on “Wolfman” will look like, though it is believed to be set in present times and in the vein of Jake Gyllenhaal’s thriller “Nightcrawler,” with an obvious supernatural twist.

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Gosling’s take fell in line with the studio’s new vision for its monster movies. Universal had originally planned on creating an interconnected universe with its vast catalog of monster IP. However, the studio reassessed after “The Mummy” with Tom Cruise misfired, and decided to move forward with filmmaker-driven projects based on the monsters’ legacies, focusing on what made the characters endure over time. Instead of prescribing a mandate that the films be part of a larger scheme, Universal loosened those restrictions and open-sourced to filmmakers to create their own unique stories.

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