Hear the thunder on the moon? It means one thing; “Werewolf at Night” is here.
The Marvel Studios mini-movie, which was billed as a “Marvel Studios Special Presentation” and ran in less than an hour, is now available on Disney+ and is the perfect Halloween treat. Gael García Bernal plays the title character, whose human name is Jack Russell (get it?), a monster hunter who is summoned to a mysterious gathering with fellow hunters. Their job is to capture and kill the most elusive animal ever found. But can he complete the task without calling himself a demon?
TheWrap spoke to director and composer Michael Giacchino, who has a long history providing memorable scores for Marvel Studios (including all three of Tom Holland’s “Spider-Man” films and “Thor: Love and Thunder”), but who is making his directorial debut here. We were talking the night after the movie’s big premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, an event Giacchino had to attend until he tested positive for COVID-19. Never mind – he was in spirit through the magic of technology. “Because I was on Zoom before [for the intro]”They let the mic open,” Giacchino said. “I was just listening to all the reactions. And that made me very happy.”
During our chat, we talked about what was really going on with the Knight character’s attraction to the werewolf, his potential for further adventures, and that rumored cameo from Blade (Mahershala Ali).
Mild spoilers for “Werewolf by Night” follow.
When Kevin Feige came to you, you immediately said you wanted to do “Werewolf by Night.” Why was it like that?
Because mainly because as I grew up, I loved monster movies, loved them. And I grew up watching him religiously along with my brother. Saturday morning was ours… I keep saying it, but it was, that’s the only way to describe it… It was our church, sitting in front of the TV and watching the creature double feature. That was our religion. We practiced the religion of demon movies. And for us at the time, we weren’t being liked. It was like, whatever creature is on double feature, that’s what we’re going to see. And of course, he served every single Universal movie, every single Hammer movie. It also included Japanese monster movies. And I like Ultraman, Godzilla and of course the best of all King Kong. He is in me, in all those movies, and I have so much love for those movies.
And I also love what those movies do in terms of exploring humanity and empathy and the way they deal with the fact that these are people with problems. These are people with serious problems who need help. And as you know in our world today, many people who need help are not helped, but persecuted. Whatever it is, you fill in the blanks. But usually, the first thing to do is to tell them apart and stay away from them. And the monster movies were about exactly that. And there’s something about it that really attracted me to explore it in the form of one of these fantasy monster movies. What I wanted to do was just find out what it was and how it would be for someone. And at the same time, there’s something to be had about how you tell that story.
Surprised to hear last night that you weren’t ready to shoot in black and white, at least initially.
Well I wanted to. In my head, I’ve always wanted to. Me and DP, Zoey White, which is incredible, she and I both used to feel like, Can you imagine if it was in black and white? wouldn’t it be amazing, He and I took the point of view, Well she’s going to light it up like it’s going to be black and white and we’ll just cross our fingers and hope for the best, And we also had a monitor on the set that we could watch. We had a different monitor that was a black-and-white only monitor so I could go and check the black-and-white monitor and go, “Oh, that looks really cool. OK, great.” We were hopefully hedging our bets. And it was then that we finally showed Kevin in black and white, when he said, “Oh,” he looked at me, he was like, “Me Looks like we’ll have to show it in black and white.”
And I was like, “Yeah.” But I get it because it’s a big left turn from everything he’s doing. So to get to that proof-of-concept and say here’s what it could be. And once we decided they were amazing, they were like, “Okay, let’s put it on real film. Let’s make it on real film.” Which we did. We put it on real film, we Scanned it back, we did it all. We did everything we could to make it as legit as possible. And it was a really fun process and I learned a lot while doing it.
There are also funny things like “scratch” and “cigarette burns”. Was there a back-and-forth discussion of how much to bend in that stuff?
This is funny. No one ever said, “Wait.” No one ever said, “Okay guys, that’s enough. You’re pushing the boundaries of good taste.” No one ever told us that. So we just kept doing what we thought was possible… Jeff Ford who edited the film is one of the great editors in the world. And both he and I are massive idiots for that kind of stuff. When you’re left alone in a room for months on a final edit, you have plenty of time to come up with all these crazy ideas. And we’ll do every single one of them. And he never said, “No.” Even with all the blood and everything, no, they never pushed back.
There was always a feeling around the postal department, Will they let us do this? Are they going to allow us?, It was a big question in the air whether we would be allowed to do it. But we just kept doing it. And around production, the joke was, “Let me guess more blood?” And I was like, “Yeah, more blood. More blood. Can we add this here? Can we put it there? How’s it going to be here?” all that stuff.
I wonder if the black and white helped with the blood as well.
I’m sure it did. I’m sure it helped. I’m sure we didn’t get hurt in this regard. Because we assumed it was all going to be TV-MA, which was fine with us. We were like, “Great, let’s do a TV-MA Marvel thing.” But I think it killed TV-14. I don’t know how all this rating stuff works.
It’s too fast for a TV-14.
Yes I agree. I agree.
There is a great shot of Gayle killing all these goons as the camera slowly pushes in as the doors of the room start coming down and blood drips onto the camera. Was the shot always engineered?
Absolutely. There were two shots in the film that I knew I needed more than anything else. And there was a scuffle on Elsa as she was turning with the shadow behind her. And then there was the second hallway shot leading up to the door in the hallway because all this madness is happening in front of us, behind us. Just almost not paying attention to the action itself, just the door and all that, everything else is happening in front of us. It took months to design and build them because we did them all in camera.
It was all done on camera. They don’t include any CG and it was very difficult to work that hallway. We only got two takes out of this because it’s too hard. It’s basically like a stunt show. It’s very difficult for them to do, it takes a lot of energy, and you don’t want to kill these people. They are doing their best. But we had two takes from that. And imagine you’re doing this thing in that dress. I mean it’s so hot in those clothes. So yeah, it was really tough. But those shots were ones that were designed from the start. And if you look at the storyboards, they’re almost shot for shot, exactly what we wanted to do. It was fun.
I like how 2D that shadow is when it’s being transformed.
It was projected on the wall while we were shooting. It was all done in shot. So we filmed it all on camera.
Can you talk about the design of the werewolf by Night Monster and its Dia de los Muertos makeup?
Well, what happened when we were designing the look early on in the visual development part and Ian Joiner, who was doing a lot of the artwork at the time, had some crazy idea and he did one… because we were working together. There were a lot of Day of the Dead makeup on Gayle, and then we were trying to design how she was going to look and feel. And then he did one with the werewolf on it. And the second I saw that, I was like, “Oh my god, yeah, that’s what we’re doing. We’re doing it, no matter what.” And it was one of those things for which I just kept insisting, “We have to do this, we have to do this, we have to do this.” And because I thought so, the reason he wears Gail is because he keeps himself tied to his family, which has nothing to do with his family.
We don’t even know how old he is, he could be hundreds of years old. And for him, that’s the only thing he can do to help him connect to those people. and I thought, Well if he’s going to turn into a werewolf, that makeup isn’t going to go away. it should still be on, What I found very powerful in a way, because it was almost a part of his power, was his connection to his family. And it felt very important to me. Family is a big theme throughout the story. So then, from the very beginning, it was one of those things that he just kept pushing for. I really wanted to do just that. And it also had a unique look which I had not seen before. It just felt right and it felt emotionally right too.
We heard the blade was about to appear. Would you like to tell us where he must have been and what he was going to do?
God, I love the Internet. Anyway, there was a brief moment when we thought, in the development process, oh it would be nice if you did that and that, But the truth is, as you start to get into the story and as you start to develop a lot of things that are just shiny extras in the beginning, drop by. You don’t need them. And I read a talk where they’re like, “Okay because of scheduling conflicts.” I’m like, well, didn’t get anywhere even close to trying to schedule it. it was something that as a thought you’re thinking, Oh wouldn’t it be nice if, if, if, and a lot of them Indian Foreign Service Walk away, not because the schedule conflicts, but because you don’t need them. They don’t necessarily help. And I’m a big fan of getting rid of anything you don’t need. And if you don’t need it, don’t do it because that’s it, we’ve all seen movies that have a lot that you don’t need. And I lean on the other side. I want to get rid of as much as possible. It has to be very thin, a lot of work. But it was an idea but it was never a thing.
I hear you’d love to do one of these in a year.
Yes, I would love to do something else. I love these characters. I think it would be fun to do something else. And the challenge for me will be, Well, how do we do anything else without doing what we just did? Thinking about where I am at the moment and there are a lot of things I want to try and we’ll see if they allow me.
Werewolf by Night is now streaming on Disney+.
