Reaction to the new Wolf Man has been as lukewarm to negative as leery onlookers feared it would be when the early design for the monster showed up at Universal Halloween Horror Nights.
And the relative hairlessness of the makeup is part of the problem. It was more man than wolf, even in the final film, but that was only after Leigh Whannell went through a few stages of design during pre-production.
Concept art of those rejected designs by artist Constantine Sekeris has surfaced online and you can be the judge if they look truer to the spirit of Lon Chaney, Jr., or simply weirder. They certainly are nightmare fuel (see below).
Sekeris posted several images in a gallery including a sketch of the head before it was given the previsualization treatment.
A few days after the above post, Sekeris shared another gallery of variations that had more hair and looked even more savage. You’ll see one example below.
RELATED: Kaiju History – A Fan Film Once Gave Godzilla His Hairiest Challenge Since Kong In The Wolfman
For a full-body visualization, check out the next image below.
These are just a few examples of the pieces Sekeris shared. Though they didn’t make the cut, he says he had fun throwing ideas at Leigh Whannell and promises to show his followers more unused designs.
The werewolf, if you want to call it that, Whannell ultimately went with was much less extreme, and had a lot more about it that was identifiable as actor Christopher Abbott. He went through a slow transformation before becoming a monster, and every detail at each stage drew inspiration from somewhere.
It’s overstated by now how much Whannell drew from Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, but that’s not the only legendary performance he took notes on. The director explained Heath Ledger’s Joker face paint inspired some early features of Abbott’s regression.
“You know what a big inspiration to me was, was Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker. Not so much in terms of look, but I had a photo of him on my desk as the Joker because I really love what they did there with the character,” he told Screen Rant.
“I find that so inspirational what they did with that character and how they approached it,” he added. “And I was thinking [about] if I can take their approach to Wolf Man, and I think I did.“
READ NEXT: First Look At Werewolf Design In Blumhouse’s ‘Wolf Man’ May Be Proof The Reboot Is DOA