Werewolf By Night is nearly here to usher in a darker, more monstrous, era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we meet a number of characters, including the titular Werewolf (Gael Garcia Bernal), Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), and Man-Thing, that will help set the stage for the next decade of Marvel stories.
Ahead of its October 7th premiere, we sat down with executive producer Brian Gay to talk about the upcoming Marvel Studios Special Presentation and he shared his thoughts on bringing monsters into the MCU, the increased amount of violence, the prospect of a Midnight Sons project and a whole lot more!
Check out the full video interview below and please remember to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE!
ROHAN: Werewolf By Night works really well as a special and since it's told as much from Elsa's perspective as it is Jack's, could these Halloween or Holiday Specials become an annual occurrence in the MCU? Where we're allowed to meet some of the more darker or more obscure characters?
BRIAN: One of the things we liked about it is that because it's a special, it's a little bit shorter, and you just sort of dive into that character. Like you said, we're not necessarily planning to spend a ton of hours with them in this first iteration, we want to explore them down the way, but we like looking at this as a little taste, a little tease of what these characters could be when they break further into the MCU. I think that we'll start looking at ways to have these happen, whether it's tied to a holiday or a theme or a special thing like that. I don't want to promise that every Halloween or every New Year's or Christmas or something like that, we're going to have one, but I will say that the benefit of being on Disney+ has opened up these opportunities for us to do something fun like this and create an homage to a classic Hollywood film, but that fits in that sort of sweet spot of a special.
ROHAN: Werewolf By Night is surprisingly violent and I think fans are really going to be in for a treat when it premieres - with the Disney+ branding, it's always hard to predict what to expect with each new Marvel project. Some things are understandably darker like this and Moon Knight whereas She-Hulk is considerably lighter. What is that behind-the-scenes process like, when you're determining how far you're able to push the envelope?
BRIAN: I think you hit the nail on the head, each character has its own approach, and part of that is what we know from the comics, part of that is also the style of the story that we want to tell. Right? If we were telling a romantic comedy, it probably would have looked a little bit different than if we were telling something that has all these nods to horror movies, and I will say that it just is what makes sense for the story and what we're telling and what's happening. We love being able to put things on Disney+, I think the benefit is just the wide swath of options that we have, whether we're looking at something like Werewolf By Night, which is totally different than She-Hulk, which is totally different than Falcon and Winter Soldier, which is totally different than Loki, you don't get just one thing, you get a whole smorgasbord of options to watch.
ROHAN: I have to ask since we're meeting Werewolf By Night, Elsa Bloodstone, and Man-Thing in this Special, and with Blade on his way and Doctor Strange still very much active - what can you say about the prospect of a Midnight Sons project? Is that something you'd like to see?
BRIAN: I think the Midnight Sons are great from all their history in the comics, it's fun to see all these people come together. What I will say is that with Werewolf By Night, we are just seeing sort of, we're just peeling back that corner a little bit and seeing that there's a darker section of the MCU that you haven't seen before. The MCU is not just, you know, the Avengers, as the special starts out by saying, there's a whole bunch of people, and there's a whole bunch of aliens, there's a whole bunch of planets, there's a whole bunch of areas to explore and so, this is just our first look into something that is probably a little different than what we've shown before in the previous movies and shows.
ROHAN: Unless I missed it, there isn't a post-credits scene --
BRIAN: Yeah, sorry, no there isn’t one, you didn’t miss anything. *laughs*
ROHAN: Oh okay, so that was deliberate - Some things were teased, but did you ever have any plans to introduce other monsters of the night, like maybe vampires?
BRIAN: I think the world of monsters is bigger than we've seen in the Special and the MCU, but our whole idea with this was to make it a tease. That's why, maybe tease is the wrong word, I'm trying, to make it something that's just sort of like an appetizer. We want to show you that this exists. We want to show you all those monsters that were around, the images, the pictures, the different ones that we saw in the Special, but we'd like to let your imagination run a little wild to see what else could be out there, and part of that comes from Michael Giacchino, who in making this said, well, we want to have those core elements and to have a couple scares and things like that, but with music and with those old movies what was scarier were the things that you didn't see, right?
Like there's a reason in Jaws that you don't see the shark for the whole runtime of the movie, you just see him pop up at key points, and so that was part of our approach to making this and our thought of going forward. We want you to be worried about what's in the shadows. We don't want you to see what's in the shadows.
On a dark and somber night, a secret cabal of monster hunters emerge from the shadows and gather at the foreboding Bloodstone Temple following the death of their leader. In a strange and macabre memorial to the leader’s life, the attendees are thrust into a mysterious and deadly competition for a powerful relic—a hunt that will ultimately bring them face to face with a dangerous monster. Inspired by horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, the chilling special aims to evoke a sense of dread and the macabre, with plenty of suspense and scares along the way as we explore a new corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.