As spooky season creeps closer, we are finally getting more details around Michael Giacchino’s upcoming MCU Disney+ special, Werewolf by Night. The special, which is set to release on October 7 on the streaming service, had its official runtime confirmed, and fear not; you won’t have to be glued in for the length of Avengers: Endgame. The official runtime was revealed to be 52 minutes and 37 seconds.
Werewolf by Night is a somewhat new venture for the MCU; they’ve had some short films in the past — the MCU One-Shots — but their focus has primarily been on feature films and their Disney+ shows in recent years. Werewolf by Night may be the MCU’s first-ever holiday special, but it won’t be their last as Disney is also set to release the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special a few months later. Giacchino has directed a few short films in the past, but Werewolf by Night marks the composer’s first feature-length — by the Academy’s standards — directorial effort.
Giacchino has made the rounds composing scores for the likes of the Mission: Impossible series, the Jurassic World trilogy, the recent Star Trek series and he even composed the score for War for the Planet of the Apes. Giacchino has also been in the Disney family for some years now. He composed the scores for several Pixar films and has been a fixture in the MCU’s musical scene since scoring Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange and composed the scores for the likes of Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Homecoming trilogy. How Giacchino found the time to serve double-duty as both director and composer of Werewolf by Night is impressive when considering that he had four other feature films released this year (The Batman, Jurassic World Dominion, Lightyear and Thor: Love and Thunder).
Werewolf by Night was announced at this year’s D23 expo and stars Gael García Bernal as Jack Russell/Werewolf by Night; Laura Donnelly as Elsa Bloodstone; and Harriet Sansom Harris as Verusa. Giacchino was also supplemented by the presence of fellow MCU veterans Pete Cameron (Moon Knight) and Heather Quinn (Hawkeye) who co-wrote this film. Zoë White of Westworld served as the cinematographer for the film. The recent trailer showed off the film’s eerie black-and-white aesthetic and looks more like one of the Universal Classic Monsters films than anything else the MCU has done before.
Werewolf by Night will be available to stream on October 7. Check out the trailer below: