From a Movieline article about Universal’s COO & President Ron Meyer speaking at the Savannah Film Festival:
Universal’s biggest recent disappointment? The Wolfman.
“We make a lot of shitty movies,” Meyer admitted. “Every one of them breaks my heart.”“We set out to make good ones. One of the worst movies we ever made was Wolfman.Wolfman and Babe 2 are two of the shittiest movies we put out, but by the same token we made movies we believe in. We did United 93, which is one of the movies I’m most proud of.”
A little later in the interview, Wolfman producer Stratton Leopold ambles over from his “family-run ice cream shop across the street” (I swear I’m not making this up) to contribute his two cents.
Meyer, good naturedly: “It’s one of those movies, the moment I saw it I thought, ‘What have we all done here?’ That movie was crappy.”
Leopold: “I said the same thing before the reshoot. I said, ‘Why are we spending all of this? Let’s shoot two scenes to create some sympathy for the [hero] and that’s it,’ but…”
Meyer: “We all went wrong. It was one of those things… like I said, we make a lot of bad movies. That’s one we should have smelled out a long time ago. It was wrong. The script never got right…”
Leopold: “The cast -”
Meyer: “—was awful. The director was wrong. Benicio [del Toro] stunk. It all stunk.”
The board of directors at NBCUniversal need to hand these two gormless, spineless motherfuckers their walking papers on the double. These guys contributed directly to the mis-management of an A-list film that subsequently flops, then they casually shit all over the cast and crew they let down with their miserable leadership. What a great way to inspire the people working for you – and cultivate a loyal audience.
You can read the entire interview on Movieline if you want – Meyer’s reasons for getting into the film industry are oh so noble – but I’m going to go look at pictures of Rick Baker holding his Oscar.
photo: WireImage
Academic, writer, publisher, friend and fellow werewolf enthusiast Dr. Hannah Priest has a 
