Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a rundown of Universal’s THE WOLFMAN panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

Rick Baker sat down to kick things off:

“What I did in this film wasn’t all that different from what Jack Pierce did in the original.” Rick Baker

Surprise guests: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro come out and the panel started in earnest before footage was shown.

This is exactly what I typed with the screen brightness turned completely down as it played:

Gore, hind legs, “the power of satan to change men into beasts”

Same cane head hopkins’ eyebrows are awesome crazy weaving i… woflman chewing on a party goer, ripping an arm off, waking up bloody. “You’ve done terrible things, be strong.” “I am what they say I am, I’m a monster…” hind legs like that of a dog

Let’s get a little more detailed…

The footage opened with a man in the woods at night, holding a lantern, looking around terrified. There’s a voice over telling the story of the first time someone’s grandfather found a victim of a werewolf, which includes “the power of Satan to change men into beasts.”

We see the man in the woods… he spins around to camera, mouth open… he drops the lantern and the camera follows it down, staying on the ground as we can see the man run off into the background… after a short beat, a wolf’s leg comes into frame, next to the lantern.

It’s a dog’s leg, with the backwards knee.

Then, as the voice-over continues, we see some gore… a torso, guts hanging out, strewn on the ground, someone melting down a silver platter and pitcher into silver bullets.

Then we’re introduced to Victorian era Benicio del Toro, returning home and, in short order, Anthony Hopkins who seems to be playing the character with a crazed gleam in his eye. And, most important, he’s swinging around the original silver-headed cane! How cool!

Anthony Hopkins has the line above: “You’ve done terrible things, be strong.” He delivers that to Benicio after he’s woken up, shirt tattered and bloody, hands muddy.

Let’s see… we also see Hugo Weaving with a badass muttonchop beard arriving on the scene.

Then there’s the mayhem of the last act, pieces of the Wolf Man running around, in silhouette, or just his torso or clawed hands. Looked nice, the claws especially. And he mauls a lady at a party (brightly lit party, no less) his hands on her face, chowing down on her neck/face as she shakes violently and people scream and run.

We only saw the wolf face once when he’s leaning in on another character, teeth bared. It was dark, but damn it’s great to see practical effects work like that.

Speaking of, one thing that was mentioned on the panel:

Baker was asked how the transformation was going to be handled in the movie and he indicated that it would be entirely CGI, that they haven’t shot anything that Baker has built for the transformation. He hopes that they change their minds as he’d love to attack another werewolf transformation in the same vein as American Werewolf In London.

UNIVERSAL (CC’d JOE JOHNSTON):

Dear People,

What the hell are you thinking about? CHANGE YOUR MINDS!

Sincerely,

Quint

Last bit… R Rated? They don’t know, but they noticed the footage looked like it was R rated. Fingers crossed!

That’s it from this panel!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com