An American Werewolf in London is an '80s horror classic. From the mind of John Landis, the werewolf tale was a new spin on the tale of man turning into beast. Rick Baker's visual effects work still holds up to this very day with most CGI projects not being able to match the realistic transformation scenes and excellent creature design. While the 1997 sequel came nowhere near the originality of the Landis project, horror fans are still in love with the series. Now Max Landis is currently in the beginning phases of relaunching his dad's movie.
When speaking with the Rugged Man Podcast, the younger Landis spoke about how he'd implement some usage of CGI but would mainly be using all practical effects work on the reboot:
“The thing I would do with CGI, were I directing this film, would be leg movement, and I would have the entire wolf’s face, back, and body be practical, and then I would fully CGI the legs for organic movements. If you remake American Werewolf and the transformation scene isn’t practical, you have f–cked up.
We’ll see if I can do it. We’ll see if I can pull it off. We’ll see if they even make it. My goal is I feel like all of the best remakes focus on one thing in the original movie, take a lot of the images of the original and then remix that really tightly. With American Werewolf I’m doing that, but I’m also just gonna try and do American Werewolf as best I can. We’ll see. I can’t make no promises.”
If Landis can convince the studio to spend the extra time, money and care on creating realistic looking werewolf effects instead of Underworld type CGI, this may be one reboot that gets our interest.