On September 22, 1998 I first ran a report about the footage you are going to see. It was shown at Siggraph that year and... for me... was one of the most exciting film projects that was ushering it's way into existence. At the time, Casey Silver was head of UNIVERSAL, and he had given the go-ahead for Industrial Lights & Magic to move forward with an ambitious 100% CGI film to hit theaters as a giant Halloween, 2000 event film for Universal. It was all based upon the 17 second clip you are about to see. I am, of course, talking about the now abandoned CGI FRANKENSTEIN film. Here's a brief bit about the film as it existed at that time:
This super secret project is an 80 million dollar movie will be overseen by 2 directors, ILM's visual effects supervisor Dave Carson and Brett Maddock, a veteran screenwriter who co-wrote the "Frankenstein" script with writing partner S.S Wilson. The story will retain a period setting of 19 century Europe, and is expected to have close to 1500 cgi shots. They plan on using the computer technology to re-create the original makeup done by Jack Pierce and the Boris Karloff profile, to have the monster look the way it should. Look for "The Wolfman" to co-star .
As the years went by Casey Silver was... no longer the Head of Universal, and a new team of executives came in. They began to be a bit afraid of the FRANKENSTEIN film as... 1. It was very expensive. 2. It was going to be Black & White. and 3. It was going to be scary and not so kid friendly. And... gosh, animated films are for kids... right? So the rewrites came, soon the project began to lose sight of what it once was. The original script... forgotten... the new regime of executives turning a great project into... well a waste of money... they finally pulled the plug. Never once going back to that original script and original directing team. This was going to be one of those GREAT films that we all hunger for, and it was ruined by the studio process. It became a dead thing.
So... this design for the WOLFMAN... forget about it. It's just a statue now. In FALL of 1998, Universal was selling it's investors on how UNIVERSAL was going to get back in the Horror Business with THE MUMMY (which was profitable) and FRANKENSTEIN... which is dead... Here's what the WOLFMAN looked like...
