It’s been an agonizing five-year wait for Leigh Whannell’s follow-up to his near-universally acclaimed The Invisible Man.
The Elisabeth Moss-led sci-fi thriller was the last hit movie before Covid forever altered the entertainment industry and world alike, having grossed nearly $140 million against a $7 million budget. Whannell’s victory lap may have been cut short as the U.S. population retreated inside during his film’s third week of release, but between The Invisible Man and his 2018 cult gem Upgrade, the Australian native officially reinvented himself as a must-see genre specialist, shedding his long-established identity as “one of the Saw guys” and “one half of Wan/Whannell.”
As the pandemic became more and more prolonged, Whannell and his co-writer/wife Corbett Tuck decided to channel their collectively challenging experience into Wolf Man, which is now another modern reimagining of a classic Universal monster à la The Invisible Man. The horror film chronicles Blake (Christopher Abbott), Charlotte (Julia Garner) and Ginger (Matilda Firth) Lovell’s temporary relocation to Blake’s abandoned childhood farm in the Oregon boonies for the sake of reconnecting with one another.
But before their moving truck could safely arrive at the Lovell property, the Lovell family is attacked by a creature with human and animal characteristics. During the ruckus, Blake is gashed by the beast, beginning his gradual transformation and degeneration into a Wolf Man. The film has a number of key themes, but Blake’s sudden fast-acting disease is meant to resemble the helpless feeling of watching a loved one disintegrate before our very eyes.
“I had a close personal friend who died of ALS. It was a long journey that she had with it, and it was a slow-motion nightmare. This all took place over many years, and it was tragic and horrific,” Whannell tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I wanted people to draw the connection between what Blake’s going through and [real-world] disease.”
Whannell’s fourth directorial outing begins during Blake’s childhood in 1995, as his survivalist father (Sam Jaeger) raises him in soldierly fashion. This section of the film also once contained a scene that introduced Blake’s ALS-stricken mother. The character was meant to be a nod to the friend that the Whannell family lost, while creating an early parallel to the affliction that Blake suffers upon his return home in 2025.
“That’s definitely one that hurt when I took it out, and I hope that people don’t come away from Wolf Man with less of an understanding of what it is really about because I took that scene out,” Whannell shares. “I hope that people still receive the idea that this is about illness and losing someone you love to illness and not being able to talk to them anymore. So maybe that scene would’ve hammered that theme home with a sledgehammer or at least made a finer point on it.”
In December 2022, Jason Blum and James Wan, in a THR interview with yours truly, stated that once their Blumhouse-Atomic Monster merger was complete, they’d explore a potential sequel to Whannell’s The Invisible Man. After all, the film’s ending organically set up an Invisible Woman movie, as Elisabeth Moss’ Cecilia used an invisibility suit to disguise the murder of her abuser as suicide. She then exits his home with the invisibility suit in hand, feeling free and empowered for the first time in ages, and one can easily imagine a scenario where she’d act as a vigilante in order to provide that same type of freedom to other women in abusive relationships they can’t escape.
However, Whannell is so content with Invisible Man’s ending and what it leaves to the imagination that he’s opting not to pursue another chapter. That said, as the writer who launched a 10-plus movie franchise in Saw and a 5-plus movie franchise in Insidious, he keenly understands that the studio may still proceed with an Invisible Man sequel at some point.
“I can’t imagine gluing more story onto [The Invisible Man]. I was so happy with Invisible Man’s ending that I just don’t feel the artistic need to go forward with it,” Whannell admits. “The studio might look at that and say, ‘Well, we feel like it should keep going because we want to make more money.’ But on an artistic level, I’m like, ‘That’s a nice closed door there. Let’s just leave it closed.’”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Whannell also discusses why he once left Wolf Man at a time when Ryan Gosling was attached as the title character. He then offers some more heartbreaking news for anyone holding out hope for an Upgrade sequel.
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We spoke five years ago before the world ended …
I remember!
And The Invisible Man was so successful that I assumed you’d entered the circle of trust where you’d turn a new movie around every two or three years. Did the two industry shutdowns set you back?
They did. It’s interesting what ends up setting a film back. The industry can be quite chaotic at times. The old William Goldman adage, “Nobody knows anything,” applies to far more than screenwriting. It’s really just people throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks, especially post-pandemic. All the turbulence that happened in the film industry where movie theaters suddenly weren’t a thing and streaming got ramped up, these things can alter a career in ways that you never saw coming. So the strikes definitely ended up delaying this film a bit, and all of a sudden, you’re like, “Wow, it’s been five years since Invisible Man came out. How did that happen?”
According to the Internet, you were on Wolf Man, off Wolf Man and back on Wolf Man. Is the explanation safe for public consumption?
Yeah, there’s not much more to it. I was working with Ryan Gosling, initially. He was attached to star, and we were developing it and developing it. Then, there were scheduling issues, so I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to move on to another project.” And then it suddenly came back around, which I was happy about, because I was able to continue with the script that I had already written. I was able to just pick it right up. Ryan, unfortunately, because of his schedule, wasn’t able to [continue], but it was definitely a twistier road than I’ve taken in the past. In the case of Upgrade and Invisible Man, it was A, B, C. It was very linear: write the movie, look for financiers, find the cast, shoot the film. So this was definitely the most winding road to making a film, but I’m so happy that I got to make it.
Director Leigh Whannell, Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner on the set of Wolf Man. Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures
Did Chris Abbott’s goat in Poor Things point you in his direction?
It didn’t! I actually saw Poor Things in New Zealand while we were in pre-production. [DP] Stefan Duscio and I went to a great little theater in Wellington, and that was after Chris had been cast in [Wolf Man]. I was well aware of his work, and he was actually the very first actor I talked to [for Wolf Man]. We had a Zoom call and chatted about it, and I was a fan of his. But the thing that actually pushed me over the edge and made me realize that it has to be Chris was seeing him do an off-Broadway play with Aubrey Plaza. The next night after I saw him, he shattered his kneecap on stage, and he had to do the rest of the play on crutches. But as luck would have it, that two-hander works fine with the character on crutches. It’s so crazed. But it was this rainy night in the West Village of Manhattan, and I ran into the theater after I had just flown there. I got there with seconds to spare before the curtain went up, and Chris’ energy was so powerful on stage. When you’re actually in the room with someone, you can reach people with your energy in a more powerful way than you can in a movie. So I walked out of there and wrote a long email to everyone at Universal and Jason Blum, saying, “We have to cast Chris.” So it was really that play [Danny and the Deep Blue Sea] that did it.
You’re from Australia, which is known for its dangerous wildlife, but you relocated to the States for the last two decades where you started a family. Was Blake’s family trip to a dangerously remote part of Oregon inspired by the first time you took your kids to visit your native country?
(Laughs.) It actually wasn’t! I would say it was inspired by the pandemic lockdown. Covid really pushed a lot of the things that were in the script. It was such an uncertain time. I had three young children, and my wife and I tried to entertain them, but they couldn’t leave the house. They were also so young that they didn’t understand why, and I somehow felt like I was failing as a parent during that time. “Everybody else is getting pandemic parenting right, and I’m the one getting it wrong.” So it was just such a strange time of uncertainty, and my wife Corbett [Tuck] and I ended up pouring that into the Wolf Man script. And one of the things that people talked about at that time was relocating. I had a lot of friends who just up and moved out of Los Angeles. One couple that’s very close to us moved to Oregon, and my wife and I then had the conversation: “Should we be living on a farm?” So it was very discombobulating, and that’s really what caused me to write that relocation into the film.
Upgrade and The Invisible Man were connected by the company Cobalt, and Wolf Man has San Francisco in common with Invisible Man. Is this the same San Francisco where Cecilia’s (Elisabeth Moss) Invisible Woman resides?
I’m going to say yes on that one, but not in a connected universe-type way where you can expect a team-up next year. Filmmakers over the course of their careers make movies that talk to each other, even indirectly. If you look at someone like Martin Scorsese, he returns to a lot of the same obsessions. He loves New York, and I can see a conversation happening between After Hours and Goodfellas. So, San Francisco feels more like that to me. There’s something that’s subconsciously linking all this stuff, but it’s not direct.
Christopher Abbott as Blake in Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures
There’s a moment in Wolf Man where I pointed at the screen like Leo DiCaprio. A character gets caught in a trap, and they have to cut off their foot. Was this a 20th anniversary nod to Saw?
(Laughs.) I don’t know if you’ll believe me or not, but when I was writing that scene, I really wasn’t thinking about Saw. I was thinking more about animal behavior. One of my big focuses on this movie was approaching this character differently. The werewolf myth and the Wolf Man character have been done many times before in different iterations. So I asked myself, “What’s going to be my contribution to this character?” And that became my obsession during the writing of the script. Real animal behavior, not howling at the moon, is something that maybe hasn’t been depicted: how wolves hunt and call to each other. And then I was thinking about what desperate animals will do when they are caught in a trap, something humans are more reluctant to do. So I wrote the scene, and it wasn’t until I got on set and the props people brought out the chain that I started thinking, “Wow, this is pretty direct. This is more of a direct reference than I had been thinking about while I was writing.” So there’s something cool about that. It’s a full-circle moment for me.
James Wan and I started off as the new young guys on the scene who’d made this crazy horror movie that went to Sundance, and you get frozen in an identity. I probably thought of myself as the young guy on the scene for far longer than I should have thought of myself as that. So it’s kind of a rude awakening to realize, “Wait, James Wan and I are no longer the young whippersnappers. We’re the veterans. We’re the old guys on the horror scene.” It really hits me when a horror filmmaker comes up to me and says, “Oh man, thank you so much. I grew up on your films. They made me want to make horror movies.” That’s when it really hits me how old we are and how long we’ve been around. So maybe that scene was my way of nodding to that young guy and being like, “We did alright. We’re still here.”
Director of Photography Stefan Duscio and Director Leigh Whannell on the set of Wolf Man. Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures
I figured the incredible spotlight shot was practical, but I was surprised to hear from Chris that the Wolf Vision also had some degree of practicality. How is that possible?
Well, Stefan Duscio, the cinematographer, and I had many conversations during the scriptwriting stage about how we were going to achieve this. Stefan would send me footage with infrared cameras, and we looked at different UV lights. There were just so many different ways we could do it, but what we landed on was just having the lighting people on set adjust the light manually as we were moving. It’s quite comical when you see the behind-the-scenes footage. You’ve got all these crew people jammed together behind the camera, shuffling along to keep out of the frame, and it took a lot to get right. But that was where we ended up despite all the technology. It ended up being so simple, and it’s almost like a magician’s trick. You think there’s this huge secret behind it, and when the trick is revealed to you, you’re like, “Wait, it’s that!?” So, sometimes, the simplest filmmaking solution ends up being the right one.
I took your advice and read the production notes.
(Laughs.)
Blake’s mother is referenced as having ALS, but I can’t recall any moment with her in the movie.
Yeah, that was a deleted scene that we shot. It’s funny that it’s still in the press kit. I guess I should have read it with a magnifying glass. I wrote this movie with my wife, but usually, I’m writing on my own in this insular little bubble in my office. And you’re never quite sure which themes people are going to receive, especially if you’re not talking about them overtly and they’re more subtextual. People are smart, and critics are intelligent viewers of movies, so you feel like they’ll get through to them.
Invisible Man felt like it was about one thing; my North Star in that movie was domestic abuse and stalking and gaslighting and all these issues. But Wolf Man feels like it’s about many things. It was written during that chaotic year of Covid and lockdowns, and instead of putting the film on rails and giving it one theme, I just threw everything in there that I was feeling about parenting, disease, illness and marriage. So Corbett and I really layered it, and I kept thinking, “Is this going to feel messy on a thematic level?”
I had a close personal friend who died of ALS. It was a long journey that she had with it, and it was a slow-motion nightmare. She started off walking with a cane, and suddenly, she was in a chair and she couldn’t walk at all. This all took place over many years, and it was tragic and horrific. So that was in my mind, and I wanted people to draw the connection between what Blake’s going through and [real-world] disease. So that now-deleted scene with the mother was in there for that reason, but then you go through the editing process and you have to kill your darlings. That’s definitely one that hurt when I took it out, and I hope that people don’t come away from Wolf Man with less of an understanding of what it is really about because I took that scene out. I hope that people still receive the idea that this is about illness and losing someone you love to illness and not being able to talk to them anymore. So maybe that scene would’ve hammered that theme home with a sledgehammer or at least made a finer point on it.
Charlotte (Julia Garner) and Blake (Christopher Abbott) in Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures
I still listen to Benjamin Wallfisch’s “Denouement” from The Invisible Man fairly often. That cathartic swell into the credits was the perfect finishing touch to that movie.
It’s so good to hear you say that. That’s my favorite track as well. I listen to it a lot.
Thus, I was very happy that you guys did a similar move with “Goodbye” at the end of Wolf Man. What was the conversation this time?
I’m glad that we’re talking about Ben. I also loved what he did with Invisible Man, and I always want to end a movie on a big emotional note. I’m not quite sure where that comes from. When I’m writing a movie, I always make a playlist of different tracks that feel similar tonally. And, for some reason, when I get to the end of writing, I’ll be listening to a big piece of music and I’ll want to carry out that emotion.
Originally, Ben had written something kind of spare and haunting for the ending, and then I said, “I love what you did with Invisible Man so much. Is there a version, just to explore it, where we end on a bigger note?” And I could tell that Ben loved what he had written, but being so collaborative, he was like, “Let me try something.” And then he ended up calling me and saying, “You bastard. I’ve fallen in love with this [new] piece.”
One of the greatest moments, if not the greatest moment, of my filmmaking life was sitting at AIR Studios in London and hearing a full orchestra play “Denouement” live for the first time when we were recording the Invisible Man score. I got chills. I then got to do the same thing for Wolf Man in the same London studio, and I felt the same way for that final track. So I really hope it has a resonance.
Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia in The Invisible Man Courtesy of Universal
I spoke to your buddies Jason Blum and James Wan at a certain point, and I mentioned to them that the end of Invisible Man perfectly sets up a vigilante Invisible Woman movie. And they both said that they’d address it once their companies’ merger was complete. So what’s stopping you from taking that story further?
An ending is the hardest thing to do in screenwriting. It’s the holy grail of screenwriting, and I revere movies with great endings. In fact, I just went to the Chinese Theatre and saw Se7en in IMAX. I’ve seen that film so many times, but seeing it on a big screen really hammered home how great that ending is. I envy that powerful ending as a screenwriter.
With Invisible Man, you talked about the track “Denouement,” and because I love that note that the film ended on, I can’t imagine gluing more story onto that. Sequels are mostly driven by the economics of Hollywood. “We scored, we did well, and let’s do it again. Let’s get them back there.” And I’ve been a front-row viewer of that. I have also written two movies [Saw and Insidious] that have turned into long-running franchises with varying degrees of artistic success. I’m not going to pretend that every movie in the Saw franchise is … That film has become its own beast, and I sit outside of it now.
I was so happy with Invisible Man’s ending that I just don’t feel the artistic need to go forward with it. The financial need is something different. The studio might look at that and say, “Well, we feel like it should keep going because we want to make more money.” But on an artistic level, I’m like, “That’s a nice closed door there. Let’s just leave it closed.”
The last two years of AI anxiety were filled with arguments that Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) made 7 years ago in Upgrade. (“You look at that widget and see the future. I see ten guys on an unemployment line.”) I know a TV show was in development at one point, but could this justifiably technophobic state reawaken Upgrade? Is Grey Trace the hero we need right now?
It’s funny because Upgrade does the same thing as Invisible Man. It ends on this ambiguous note, this question mark, where you ask, “Where’s this going to go?” I do think it’s so incredible how the science fiction that I wrote in that movie has become ubiquitous. I was walking along the other day with my brother who was visiting from Australia, and this autonomous car, this Waymo, drove past us. And it struck me that I grew up watching movies where that was considered an absolutely outrageous sci-fi concept. Now, it’s something that people don’t even bat an eyelid at when one drives past. No one reacted in a big way. So it’s amazing how quickly we, as human beings, adapt to this stuff that was once science fiction, and it’s been funny to watch the world catch up to Upgrade. But as far as making a sequel, that’s another one where I’m like, “I think we’re good there. We’re good.” I would love to let that film keep bubbling away as this cult movie, and if people keep thinking that it was somehow prophetic, then that would be great.
Melanie Vallejo and Logan Marshall-Green in Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade
Patrick Wilson’s Insidious: The Red Door (2023) became the highest-grossing entry in that franchise. Has he made sure that you and James are keenly aware of this?
(Laughs.) He’s way too humble for that. He is absolutely the opposite of that guy. I visited the set while he was making the film, and he was so inclusive. He was keen to make everyone aware that he wanted help and that he was a first-timer. He’s secure enough in his acting career that he didn’t feel like he needed to puff his chest out and do that thing that some directors can do. So he’s absolutely the opposite of that person, and I’ve never received a text from him saying, “Number one, bitches! You guys are in my wake.”
Five years ago, you told me to ask you the following question whenever your next movie came out, so here goes: have you become jaded about filmmaking?
I have not, and I’m so glad I haven’t, because there’s plenty of reasons to be jaded with everything that’s happening in our industry. We did the sound mix for Wolf Man at Warner Bros., and I would get there early in the morning to just walk around the lot. And I remember stopping to read one of those plaques on the soundstage wall that lists off all the movies that have been shot there. And Stage 15 at Warner Bros. had one ‘80s classic after another from my childhood: Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Gremlins, Body Double and on and on. Body Double is not exactly a good pairing with The Goonies, but I just remember thinking, “God, what a time this was.” It was a time when the industry was truly centered here in L.A., and being on one of those lots would’ve been a really powerful experience. It would’ve looked the way that movie studios look in movies about the movie industry: extras in costume walking around and movie stars zipping around in golf carts. But I remember thinking, “This is upsetting in a way because it feels like this moment has passed.” So I wouldn’t say that I felt jaded, but I felt a bit like I had missed the heyday of studio filmmaking. But the feeling didn’t last. Eventually, I was like, “I still love making movies.” No matter how culture changes, no matter where the industry is centered or how they’re presenting movies, I just love making them, and I still have that same love.
Well, I hope you get back out there soon. Five years was too long a wait.
I promise I’m going to try. For my own mental health, I’m going to try and get something done much quicker.
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Wolf Man is now playing in movie theaters.
