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Del Toro ready bare claws in ‘Wolf Man’

Remake of 1941 film will be set in Victorian England
/ Source: Reuters

He was the Mexican narcotics officer in “Traffic,” a born-again ex-con in “21 Grams” and a corrupt cop in “Sin City.” Now actor Benicio Del Toro looks forward to playing “The Wolf Man.”

Universal Pictures, which just named a new executive team Thursday after a mediocre year at the box office, has tapped screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker to haul the 1941 horror classic out of the closet for a brush-up, with Del Toro to assume the title role.

The Puerto Rican-born actor, who won an Oscar for his performance in “Traffic,” would fill the role Lon Chaney Jr. played in the 1941 original as a guy transformed into a nocturnal man-beast by the bite of a werewolf, a spokesman for the film studio said.

Unlike the original, however, the remake will be set in Victorian England, rather than in modern Britain, he said.

Walker, whose previous screen credits include the crime thriller “Seven” and “Sleepy Hollow,” has spent several months working up new plot twists and characters to make the most of new high-tech visual effects.

Universal, which released the original picture and owns rights to the Wolf Man character, said no director is yet attached to the project and no production date has been set.

Show business trade paper Daily Variety said producers hope to start shooting the film next year, with the expectation of “Wolf Man” becoming a big summer 2008 release.

Universal previously scored huge success with an update to “The Mummy,” another title in its vault of horror classics. The 1999 remake grossed $412 million worldwide and the 2001 sequel “The Mummy Returns” grossed $433 million.

Other titles in Universal’s library of monster flicks include “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “The Bride of Frankenstein” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” the latter of which is also in development for a possible remake.

“We are continuing to mine the library as much as we can,” Universal Studios President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Meyer told Reuters, when asked about the franchise potential of its old monster favorites. “We are headed somewhat in that direction.”

Universal’s costly “King Kong” remake, based on the 1933 classic from RKO Radio Pictures, was one of only two releases from the studio last year that crossed the $100 million mark at the box office. But its $217 million domestic gross still fell short of expectations for a film that cost well over $200 million to produce and market.

Variety said “The Wolf Man” remake deal grew out of meetings between the producers, Walker and Del Toro, who the newspaper said collects Wolf Man memorabilia. Del Toro’s last big-screen appearance was the crooked cop Jackie Boy Rafferty in “Sin City.” He also earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in “21 Grams.”