The Wolfman Movie Trailer

Last year at Comic Con, Universal showed off the first footage from Joe Johnston's The Wolfman. Now over a year later, after some reshoots, effects tweaks and a couple of release date changes for the film, the trailer is online for your perusal. Yahoo has the clip for the update of the classic film, starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving. Also available are a handful of new stills, which went live last night in anticipation of the trailer debut. See the stills and trailer after the break.

What you'll see here is very much like what we saw at Comic Con in 2008. That footage was considerably more violent and gory (there were some eviscerated guts, etc) but this trailer and the old clip summarize the story in basically the same way. Last year, makeup guru Rick Baker wasn't too keen on the level of gore in the film, and it's hard to tell from this whether that's been dialed down or not. We can see, however, that there's some good old-fashioned weirdness going on. Maybe a trip to the famous Bedlam home for the insane, and definitely a few sequences of the transformed Benicio exploring London and the suburbs.

There was also concern about how the transformation sequences would look. This trailer seems designed almost expressly to address those qualms, and the transformation looks pretty great. Baker is known for his amazing practical werewolf effects in An American Werewolf in London, and the blend of CGI and practical effects seen here looks excellent. For that alone I'm still extremely curious about the film. Marvel fans consider, too, that this is by the director of Captain America, so if you haven't seen The Rocketeer in a while, this could be a refresher course on his style and approach.

The Wolfman opens on February 12, 2010...for now.