The Wolfman reboot with Ryan Gosling lands The Invisible Man's Leigh Whannell as director

Forget the Dark Universe, Universal are doubling down on the Leigh Whannell-iverse. The director – who recently rebooted The Invisible Man to both critical and commercial success – has entered discussions to reboot another classic monster movie: The Wolfman. As previously reported, Ryan Gosling has been the driving force behind the reboot and will portray the eponymous beast.

According to Deadline, Whannell was first not too interested in the project, but after speaking with the producers, was won over. He will not write a treatment of the movie based on an original idea and inspired by the 1941 classic. Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo – best known for writing Netflix's Orange is the New Black – will then write the script. 

Before Whannell was on board, previous reports new version of Wolfman is believed to be set in present times and will be akin to Jake Gyllenhaal’s thriller Nightcrawler but with a sci-fi twist. Whether that will remain the case is unknown.

Wolfman is the latest Universal monster to be brought back by the studio. A new Dracula movie is currently in development with director Karyn Kusama, while Paul Feig has been working on Dark Army, which will bring together multiple new and old monsters. James Wan is also set to produce a Frankenstein movie. None of these are set to be interconnected – the priority is now on auteur-driven work rather than creating a Dark Universe.

Meanwhile, Gosling is heading to space once more, portraying an astronaut in Phil Lord and Chris Miller's adaptation of The Martian author Andy Weir’s next novel. There's currently no word on which of the two projects will get before cameras first.