Marvel Studios’ oddball Halloween horror particular Werewolf by Night opens on a stylized artwork fresco of the Avengers. A voice-over explains that we’re all accustomed to sure occasions in the world of sunshine, but nobody ever talks about the world beneath, the place Werewolf’s story takes place. Then it goes on to inform a story about monsters, creatures by no means seen earlier than in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That fresco is a mighty elliptical manner of addressing whether or not Werewolf by Night’s story takes place inside established MCU canon — particularly since visually and narratively, it seems to be nothing like the remainder of the MCU. Mostly shot in black and white, with closely stylized performances and goofy violence straight out of a Hammer horror basic, the hourlong Disney Plus mini-movie feels prefer it takes place fully in its personal world. And the MCU has spent the previous couple of years establishing the existence of the multiverse, and totally different worlds the place something may occur.
So Polygon requested director Michael Giacchino to make clear: Does Werewolf by Night happen on Earth-616, in the acquainted MCU timeline?
The definitive reply, he says, is sure.
“Oh, we tried for a long time to just say [in the intro], Look, this is part of the MCU,” Giacchino says. “But it felt like we also needed to show it as well. And I said, ‘Well, what if we just showed it in the same illustrative way that we’re showing these other images up front?’”
Like different latest MCU tales — Eternals, as an illustration — Werewolf by Night introduces new concepts to the MCU, like the key MacGuffin, a magical merchandise known as the Bloodstone. There are additionally new characters, together with Elsa Bloodstone, inheritor to the Bloodstone household, performed by The Nevers’ Laura Donnelly, and Jack, a contender for the Bloodstone, performed by Gael García Bernal. But it additionally tells viewers all these folks and issues have been there all alongside. In this case, these concepts embody vampires, werewolves, stranger monsters like Man-Thing, and a household that hunts them down and kills them with the assist of the Bloodstone.
“There’s this whole corner of the Marvel Universe that no one knows anything about,” Giacchino says. “It’s a very underground sort of area. And these hunters and these monsters, they all kind of exist in the shadows, in a place the rest of the world won’t admit to, or doesn’t pay attention to.’ That [intro] was our way of saying, All of that other stuff is still there, it’s all good. No one worry! [laughs]”
Btu the place does Werewolf by Night match into the MCU timeline? Giacchino isn’t saying.
“People tend to want this connectivity to everything,” he says. “They’ve been sort of trained in the MCU to know that everything is connected in some way, everything is going on in some similar timeline. This [story] does happen in the MCU, during all of that, we just don’t show you where, when, how. And it’s not important to show that, because what’s important are these characters. This is going to be a story — one night in the life of [protagonists] Jack and Elsa, that’s what you’re going to get. And then where we go from there, we’ll see. We’ll see. Who knows?”
Giacchino’s particular does appear to be it’s serving to to arrange the story of vampire hunter Blade, but he says that was by no means a part of any dialog about Werewolf by Night.
“We never had any mandate to queue up anything,” he says. “It was really just Let’s tell this story. I guess by default, we’re saying, Look, monsters exist in the MCU. That was the one thing we did want to say was, Look, yes, these things exist, they’re here, we’re gonna show them to you. And then from there, you can go anywhere you want. […] When Blade comes, people are already ready for it. But there was never a mandate to say this is a way of connecting to this, and connecting to that. That was never a part of it.”
While Werewolf by Night establishes Elsa and Jack in the grand MCU continuity, the particular doesn’t provide a lot about their pasts or futures. This is all as meant by Giacchino.
“I was able to just go in and tell the story I wanted to tell without worrying about Where was Jack right before this? or Where does he go right after this?” Giacchino says. “If I were a kid and I saw this, I would make it all up in my head. Part of doing this was to create those discussions. That’s what was fun about this stuff as a kid, was wondering what’s going to happen, or where it’s going to go. Not knowing is more exciting than knowing. It’s like horror — what you don’t see is more frightening than what you do see. That was our rule of thumb all along the way.”
The query of the place Jack and Elsa may go subsequent remains to be open. Could Werewolf by Night get a sequel, spinoff, or sequence of its personal?
“I mean, I love these characters. I would hate to just abandon them,” Giacchino says. “I would love to do more with them, of course. Up until now, though, we’ve been just working our butts off to get the film done so we could get it out into the world. Maybe now we’ll have some time to reflect and look at it and figure out what happens.”
Werewolf by Night debuts on Disney Plus on Oct. 7.
