Werewolf links, news, and reviews
Peace Arch Entertainment has just posted a trailer for their upcoming werewolf movie, creatively entitled “Never Cry Werewolf“. You can watch the trailer, but be forewarned: it is not awesome. No release date has been scheduled, so watch yourself– this could arrive in your local video store’s DVD bargin bin at any time.
Werewolf news has been slow these days. It’s kind of hard to believe, with the X-Files: I Want To Believe & The Wolf Man on the way, Welcome To Hoxford coming out in August, and a spate of werewolf novels hitting the market. (more…)
As reported by Variety and a number of different sources today, the new X-Files film now has an official title: “X-Files: I Want To Believe”. No word on whether the film involves werewolves or not, but according to Variety, director Chris Carter confirmed that “that the pic won’t focus on the show’s alien mythology but instead features a stand-alone story on the struggle between faith and science.” There’s still hope!
NarniaWeb has posted scans and a transcript of a recent Total Film Magazine interview with Howard Berger, special effects guru for the forthcoming Narnia film Prince Caspian. Among the various creatures Berger’s team created is a particularly nasty-looking werewolf (or wer-wolf, as the film calls him).
From the interview:
The digital werewolf was being handled by Weta Digital in New Zealand, but we also had a full suit with mechanical head, pretty messed up and scarred and everything, which was great. Really cool.
You can check out the rest of the interview here.
Update: I don’t know why I didn’t think of posting this before, but here’s some concept art for the werewolf, courtesy of the Narnia Wiki:
Nibris, a game studio based in Cracow, Poland, is getting ready to release a game titled Sadness for the Nintendo Wii. Set in Europe during the 1910s and presented entirely in atmospheric black and white, Sadness is a psychological horror game for adults. According to concept art and comments made by the game developers, many of the creatures in the game are inspired by Slavic mythology. And what does that mean? Why, that means werewolves, of course!
According to Gaming Today, the werewolves in Sadness “will not have a whole lot in common with the more traditional aspect of werewolves. In the game, the werewolf is born human and when mature they will change during the full moon and will not regenerate after death.”
Not much else is known about Sadness at the moment. Game news sites like GameSpot and IGN are maintaining game overview pages that have been largely stagnant since 2006, but yesterday’s announcement by Emergent Game Technologies (who are providing the development platform for Sadness) has stirred up interest and some new information.
Players will need to confront their greatest fears and protect themselves in hopes of not getting trapped inside the main character’s nightmare. The game has eight different extreme endings each with their own premise, which are assigned to a player based on specific factors during the game. To compliment the intense gameplay, the Wii-mote and Wii Nunchuk control the main character’s hands so players feel as though they are in the psychological thriller.
Watch the game’s official site, sadness-wii.com, for further press releases about what sounds like a groundbreaking game.
The latest issue of the Official Nintendo Magazine has an interview with Yoshihisa Hashimoto, lead designer of Sonic Unleashed. Hashimoto confirms the presence of a “Were-Sonic” mode, which offers gamers a slower but more physical method of playing through the levels. From the interview:
[Were-Sonic is] a slightly slower and yet more agile beast. Where Sonic dodges past obstacles, Were-Sonic manhandles them out of the way and can toss enemies around like nobody’s business.
You can read the full interview in Official Nintendo Magazine issue 29, which went on sale last Friday. If I can find scans of the whole article, I’ll post ’em here.
Blogcritics Magazine writer Richard Marcus has posted a review of The Complete Underworld, a graphic novel collection that illustrates and expands upon the setting, story and characters of the Underworld films. There’s also a prequel story (today’s the day for Underworld prequels, isn’t it?) called Red In Tooth And Claw, which Marcus says is “quite a good, inspired, piece of story telling that manages to recreate the world of the vampires and werewolves in another environment.”
The Complete Underworld is published by IDW Publishing, the same company that’s releasing Ben Templesmith’s new werewolf series Welcome to Hoxford, which Werewolf News mentioned earlier this week.
Fangoria has a report about Rise of the Lycans, the latest installment in the Underworld film franchise.
Producer Richard Wright says that despite a budget lower than those of its predecessors, Rise of the Lycans will be “even more ambitious than the second,” and Tatopoulos Studios technician Guy Himber adds, “We’re not as makeup-heavy on this show as on the previous ones. It’s really all about the werewolves.”
Rise of the Lycans finished shooting in March and is currently in post-production. A release date has not been announced. Take your time with those werewolf effects, guys.
Gametrailers.com has just posted a teaser trailer for Sonic Unleashed. I think we can consider the werewolf rumours confirmed.
