(SeaPRwire) –
By: Lucas Caldwell
If you’ve spent any time in genre film circles the last decade, you know the bit. Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement would show up to a press junket. Someone would ask about the werewolf-focused What We Do in the Shadows sequel. They’d grin, make a vague joke about it being in the works. Then they’d move on to plug whatever big franchise project they were there to sell. The cycle repeated for so long it became a running meme among fans. Most fans stopped holding their breath for the film years ago.
The original What We Do in the Shadows hit festivals 12 years back. Before that, Waititi was best known for Flight of the Conchords and indie rom-com Eagle vs Shark. It was a micro-budget, mostly improvised mockumentary. It centered a crew of bickering, out-of-touch Kiwi vampires. Waititi and Clement co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the feature. It turned the pair from niche comedy favorites into A-list Hollywood talent. The property spawned two successful TV spinoffs. One was the cop-focused Wellington Paranormal. The other was the long-running American sitcom adaptation for FX.
Clement first teased the werewolf spinoff back in 2015. It was initially titled What We Do in the Moonlight. It was later renamed We’re Wolves. The film would follow Rhys Darby’s Anton and his laid-back werewolf pack. Waititi joked to IndieWire in 2019 that the project was a running bit. He compared it to a dad promising over and over he’d make it home for Christmas. Fans wrote it off as Waititi’s stuck development slate piled up. Most assumed it would join the list of abandoned cult sequel teases. That slate included an Akira reboot, a Star Wars film, and a biopic of Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles.
The update that writing has finally started broke at Annecy. Clement was there promoting his new animated feature Kiri and Lou Go Raaa! He told Collider the pair only work on the script when their schedules line up. No studio fast track is attached to the project right now. This is a far cry from how most legacy IP gets pulled off the shelf today. Streaming platforms have burned through catalog IP at a record clip the last five years. Most studios rush half-baked sequels into production to juice streaming subscriber numbers. These projects rarely resonate with long-time fans of the original work. They don’t wait for creators to carve out time between other gigs.
The original Shadows film took six full years to make. It was built on loose improvisation, inside jokes, and zero studio notes. That unpolished, genuine tone is what built the franchise’s loyal fan base in the first place. The two TV spinoffs worked because they held onto that shaggy, low-stakes energy. Waititi’s recent blockbuster outings drew mixed fan reactions. Many criticized them for leaning too hard on studio-mandated, watered-down humor. Most big-budget franchise projects lose that spark the second a marketing team gets involved. Fans have waited 12 years for this follow-up. They don’t care about a rushed release date or a nine-figure marketing budget. They just want to see the same core group make dumb werewolf jokes with their friends.
When We’re Wolves finally hits screens, it will outearn every big-budget Waititi franchise project of the last decade.
Author bio: Lucas Caldwell, a tech and pop culture opinion leader with millions of X/Twitter followers, covering streaming media economics and digital fan culture.