Taika Waititi Needs To Make This Comedy-Horror He Promised Us Already
I don’t care if Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie ever goes into production, it wouldn’t bother me if he never makes another appearance in FX’s What We Do in the Shadows, and there isn’t an inch of me that’s concerned about whether or not he makes Thor 5 (I mean, honestly… aren’t we all good on Thor? I think we’re good on Thor). But before this magnificently funny and creative filmmaker gets caught up in any more projects, he needs to get working on what promises to be the greatest werewolf movie of all time: We’re Wolves.
Taika Waititi needs to get working on his long brewing What We Do in the Shadows spinoff, We’re Wolves.
In case you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about: long before FX’s What We Do in the Shadows gave us the tremendous gift of Matt Berry as a vampire, Taika Waititi co-directed, co-wrote, and starred in the 2014 film of the same name. Waititi, Jemaine Clement, and Jonny Brugh play the vampires followed by a documentary crew, though in Wellington, New Zealand rather than Staten Island.
Among the funniest scenes in the film are when the vampire trio throw insults at a pack of werewolves led by Anton, played by none other than Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death co-star Rhys Darby. Anton is the pack’s Alpha, and we soon learn that in the world of What We Do in the Shadows, werewolves follow the instructions of the Alpha as if the orders were coming from a strict parent.
When one of the werewolves uses a homophobic slur to describe Taika Waititi’s character, it gives the pack the opportunity to deliver possibly the funniest line in the entire movie. Darby doesn’t say it himself. Instead, he scolds the offending werewolf, and calls out to the group, “What are we?”
“Basically, it follows the werewolves, the group of werewolves… The movie is called We’re Wolves. We are wolves. We’re wolves. It’s a wordplay. Get it?”
-Taika Waititi on We’re Wolves
The rest of the pack chants it in unison, like students repeating a strict teacher’s oft-repeated rule: “Werewolves, not swearwolves.”
It isn’t their last encounter with the werewolf pack. Toward the end of the mockumentary, the vampires provoke the werewolves again, leading to the latter transforming into wolfman form and the vampires’ human buddy Stu seemingly being killed. We learn later Stu was turned into a werewolf and joined the pack.
In 2017, while promoting Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi promised this was not the last we’d see of this hilarious pack of lycanthropes. On BUILD, he confirmed the spinoff film We’re Wolves was on the way.
“Basically, it follows the werewolves, the group of werewolves,” the filmmaker told BUILD. “The movie is called We’re Wolves. We are wolves. We’re wolves. It’s a wordplay. Get it?”
Since then, Taika Waititi has been specifically non-specific about when we could possibly get to see We’re Wolves. To his credit–and unsurprisingly–when asked when we can hope to see the spinoff, he finds the funniest ways to say, “No idea.”
“I text Taika like once or twice a year asking, ‘What’s happening with We’re Wolves? When are we doing it?’”
-Rhys Darby on We’re Wolves
In 2019, as reported by IndieWire, Waititi referred to We’re Wolves as “the film that [Jemaine Clement] and I keep pretending that we’re making.” He went on to compare himself and Clement to deadbeat dads, with the film as the neglected child.
“I feel bad to even mention it now because we keep saying it,” Waititi said, “[but] it’s like a dad saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll be home for Christmas.’ … It’s not like we don’t want to come home for Christmas. We would like nothing more but we have a lot of sh-t going on.”
The most recent update came three years ago when Darby told ComingSoon.net “I text Taika like once or twice a year asking, ‘What’s happening with We’re Wolves? When are we doing it?’ Unfortunately they’re both just super busy, so there’s been no real movement on the movie.”
This is unacceptable. That’s not true, obviously, but it’s how I feel. This is unacceptable.
Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s mockumentary creation has already spawned its own Marvel-esque expanded universe. Along with 5 seasons of the spinoff FX series, and a sixth on the way, there’s Wellington Paranormal. Starring Mike Minogue and Karen O’Leary, Wellington Paranormal follows the working hours of the two police officers who visit the vampires’ home in the 2014 film but are hypnotized into ignoring all the craziness going on in the house.
Let’s think about that. In an already hilarious movie, the goofy and surprisingly conservative werewolves led by Rhys Darby are perhaps the funniest thing. Yet the film about those werewolves is lost in development limbo, yet a whole TV series about two characters who show up for a single scene–the police of Wellington Paranormal–managed to get produced.
Taika Waititi, this is unacceptable. That’s clearly not true and I don’t have the authority to say it, but it’s how I feel. This is unacceptable.
We have enough Star Wars. Akira and Time Bandits are already movies. No one wants more Thor movies, they can do a Free Guy 2 without you, and a Jojo Rabbit 2 would just be weird.
Gives us more werewolves, or we’ll start being swearwolves.
