We should have seen this coming. True to his name, the “Rat” feeds off the projects of others, like a nasty rodent looking for scraps he crawls himself in there and makes a God damn mess.

He first did it with X-MEN 3 after Bryan Singer left to take on Supes, though to be fair to Ratner he did deliver a very watchable and mildly entertaining two hours but it is easily the worst in the series. He then did it with ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK when Len Wiseman pulled out of the project in the Summer and originally he was suppose to be filming that project right now but New Line balked at it when it was pretty obvious that they were making a huge mistake.

Now it would seem Ratner is going to be the man to deliver THE WOLF MAN for Universal after Romanek’s sudden departure on Monday night.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. Ratner is just one of those directors who do absolutely everything by the book, taking little risk or putting any kind of creative effort or interesting visual stamp to his pictures. There’s just nothing to his movies. They are hollow, empty and not insulting or bad enough to be called bad.

They just exist, nothing more.

And he’s the safe studio choice. That’s why he keeps getting these gigs because he can come in quick, do his work and deliver just what the studio wants with little rush and a nice profit in return (his average gross per film in his career is a whopping $122.5 million).

This time last week, THE WOLF MAN was one of my favourite movies in production but Universal have screwed things up with this choice. We can add this classic horror character to the graveyard that Rob Cohen is sending their MUMMY character too in August.

Farewell WOLF MAN, we didn’t even get to know ya.

source - aicn