5 Reasons Why The Wolf Man Is A Big Box Office Disappointment

The weekend didn't go quite as Blumhouse and Universal had planned. With the release of director Leigh Gunnell's The Wolf Man, studios may have realized they had a slam dunk on their hands. Unfortunately, that's not the way things panned out. Whannell's latest performance was significantly worse and fell well short of expectations. Instead of topping the charts, it had to settle for third in 2025's first big surprise.

“Wolf Man” was estimated at $10.5 million domestically, which fell short of even the most modest estimates for the weekend. Foreign audiences won't help here either, as the film opened internationally with just $4.8 million. Blumhouse tends to make movies on the cheap, but this one cost $25 million before marketing. Now, the monster movie is facing an uphill battle against profitability.

As the weekend approaches, “Wolf Man” saw a debut in the $20 million range. That would be a win without qualification. So what went wrong? Why does Whannel's latest fall so far short of expectations? Is there any chance of recovery? We'll look at the bigger picture by breaking down the top five reasons why this movie was such a disappointment. Let's dive into it.

First and foremost, the reviews for The Wolf Man were not very good, to say the least. The film currently has a 52% approval rating from critics Rotten tomatoesto reach 58% of audience results. Worse, it earned truly terrible C – CinemaScorewhich is one of the lowest for almost any horror film since 2020. This does not bode well for its prospects in the coming weeks. /Film's Jeremy Mathai called The Wolfman a “half-assed scare fest” in his review 6 out of 10. In short, positivity was hard to come by.

The reinvention of the werewolf myth centers on Blake (Christopher Abbott), who inherits his remote Oregon childhood home after his father disappears. Blake convinces his wife Charlotte (Julie Garner) to take a break from the city and visit the house with their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). Upon arrival, they are attacked by a mysterious animal and are forced to barricade themselves inside with the creature in hiding. As the night progresses, Blake begins to behave strangely.

Whannell did a brilliant update to another monster classic in 2020 with The Invisible Man, so expectations for this film were very high. Rightly or wrongly, this seems to be at odds with his recent work as a director.

There's no getting around the fact that the design of the creature in The Wolfman didn't help the case for this movie. Universal cleverly tried to hide the final design of the werewolf in their marketing. Where one was, however, was the now infamous snafu dressed in costume as a creature on Halloween Horror Nightswhich went viral and allegedly poisoned the well.

It would be unfair to say that the costume completely reflected the content of the film. It would be fair to say so Hanel did something unique that was always divisive. Didn't this incident happen on Halloween Horror Nights, who knows? But as events unfolded, at least a certain number of people thought they would fall victim to a bait-and-switch.

One of the biggest surprises of the weekend was Sony's “One of Them Days,” which topped the charts with an estimated $11.6 million. The well-received comedy came out of nowhere to essentially equal Disney's “Mufasa: The Lion King” ($11.5 million) at the top of the charts. While none of these films are horror films, it shows that audiences had other crowd-pleasing options to choose from if they were willing to go to the movies. Why go to a movie with a bad mouth when there are other things to learn?

For those who was start watching a horror movie Robert Eggers' “Nosferatu” is still there doing business. It might have been the most attractive option for viewers who had been clamoring to see it in previous weeks. If word of mouth had been stronger for Whannel's latest, we might be having a different conversation. But when there is so little good buzz, it's hard to get any momentum.

January movies don't often represent Hollywood studios bringing out their A-game. January is traditionally considered a “dump month” for studies. While that's not always true, with movies like Bad Boys for Life changing that narrative, it's still a thing. This is partly due to the fact that the NFL playoffs are usually airing during this time, which can be difficult to compete with. To top it off, this past weekend featured games between the Houston Texans and Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday, as well as the Washington Commanders and Detroit Lions. We also had the Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, along with the Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills.

These games determined which four teams would lose their chance to play in the Super Bowl. In that case, many potential ticket buyers were off the table. Then again, if the popularity of The Wolfman was strong, some of these people might have figured out a way to pencil at some point in the movie. Who knows? If Ryan Gosling had starred in it as originally plannedthings could have been different. As it is, for much of the US, soccer won.

Perhaps more than any other sub-group of moviegoers, horror fans are very knowledgeable. They are loyal and will emerge when fed. They are hungry and looking for things. However, they also aren't the ones to fall into the “fool me twice” camp that often. In that case, it's hard not to wonder whether Blumhouse's Bad Series will hit the box office in 2024 was a factor here.

Blumhouse is a household name for horror fans with hits such as The Purge, Get Out, the recent Halloween films and Five Nights at Freddy's, among many others. However, the films “Night Bath”, “Imaginary” and “Afraid” were released last year. The only winner was the remake of the studio “Speak No Evil”. Even in 2023, the studio had to suffer the failure of the movie “Exorcist: Believer”. So it's likely that an audience paying attention will wait and watch. Blumhouse probably won't get an automatic pass at this point. “Wolf Man” has hit “wait to stream it at home” at best. This, meanwhile, does nothing to complete or change Blumhouse's narrative.

“The Wolf Man” is in theaters now.