Although we don’t get too much inside information from actor Gael García Bernal in a new behind-the-scenes featurette for the Marvel special Werewolf by Night, there are a couple of creepy occurrences that happen in the video that’ll keep your blood chilled for a while.
In the upcoming special, Bernal plays Jack Russell, a man who transforms into a werewolf because of a family curse. At the beginning of the featurette, a woman named Verusa (Harriet Sansom Harris) thanks a group of men, including Jack, “for gathering in ritual.”
Werewolf by Night was shot as a classic black and white monster movie from the 1930s, like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy. “Werewolf by Night is just a giant mashup, love letter to all of these old movies, which I absolutely loved and lived on growing up,” said Werewolf director Michael Giacchino, the Academy Award-winning composer of such animated features as Up and Inside Out.
Kevin Feige, executive producer and chief creative officer of Marvel Entertainment, added that Marvel wanted to explore new characters and sides of the MCU that fans had never seen before “with this unusual, fun and frightening spin on the supernatural.”
Some of the supernatural elements of the special will, of course, be seen when Bernal’s character Jack morphs into the title character. If Giacchino wants to keep the spirit of the classic creature features of the past intact, does that mean he has included a werewolf transformation created with practical effects or will he incorporate computer-generated movie magic into the scene?
At the 49-second mark of the featurette, viewers are given a quick glimpse of part of the transformation when Jack is zapped by a beam of electricity and his left hand, fingers and fingernails begin to stretch into a wolf-like appendage.
“There is a lot of risk in the best way,” Gael García Bernal said in the video.
Werewolf by Night premieres on Disney+ on October 7.