Legendary six-time-Oscar-winning make-up artist Rick Baker joined stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt to bring us the first footage of Universal’s new version of The Wolfman. And it’s a period piece.

Highlights:

- The origins of the remake stem from Del Toro’s Lon Chaney Jr. fandom.

- It looks like “Francis Ford Coppola’s The Wolfman”

- Of course, Anthony Hopkins would be more welcome as Van Helsing again

- At least it will likely be R-rated, as it looks quite bloody

- Baker honors Stan Winston by labeling his death “the end of an era”

- Blunt is apparently into two-headed dudes

Check out the full liveblog transcript after the jump.

2:31 - Another look at the Wolfman clip:

They’re rolling the clip one more time, and now I can see how bloody it is.

Brains, guts, carnage.

You only see a couple of extremely quick flashes of the Wolfman.

It’s very gothic looking, lots of blacks and browns. Full costumes, long takes. It’s almost like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Wolfman.

Anthony Hopkins comes up on his son, post-transformation and rasps “You’ve done terrible things.”

Apparently he gets caught and is strapped down in a medical observatory while he transforms.

We’re out, and it’s not even a full moon

2:29 - Extra guests and more Q&A:

Rick Baker brings Dave and Lou Elsey up on stage and introduces them, as they helped out with the creature effects. They’ve worked on Farscape and Star Wars.

A pair of twins (they asked a question during the Watchmen panel) get up and ask what the “most fun part of working on the movie was.”

Del Toro says, “Uh, the chase.”

Rick Baker says, “Is that a two headed man?”

and Emily Blunt says, “Hi… what are you doing later?”

So now we know all about her secret sexual proclivities.

2:25 - Regarding CGI and “the end of an era”:

While it might be del Toro in a costume, it looks like they’ll be using CGI to show the Wolfman’s transformation. Baker is hoping they’ll do something like the physical transformations in An American Werewolf in London.

Rick Baker is waxing poetic about Stan Winston and all the contributions he made to the art. He calls his death “The end of an era.”

2:22 - Regarding The Wolfman’s rating:

“Will this movie be rated R?”

Del Toro: “I don’t think we know yet…”

Rick Baker chimes in with “I think based on this trailer it looks like it’ll be rated R.”

2:20 - The Wolfman Q&A, Question #2:

Rick Baker gets asked if it’s more challenging to do makeup effects on something like this or working on Norbit, and he said working on human character faces, like Eddie Murphy’s Mr. Wong character, was much more challenging. “But I’ve been making myself up as the Wolfman since I was 10 years old.”

Rick Baker quips “Look, it’s Criss Angel!” — the next kid asking a question is wearing some sort of street thug wear and a black bandana. And he looks like Criss Angel… at age 10.

Emily Blunt said “I was really terrified during the chase scenes. I was literally running. While wearing a corset.”

Del Toro leers: “And I just had to chase her.”

Del Toro geekily giggles and admits that he’s a big fan of both Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Jr.’s film roles, and that he watched all of them. He also got into the old Hammer films like “Curse of the Wolfman”.

2:17 - The Wolfman Q&A, Question #1:

Q&A’s start, and the first question is “What similarities are there between this movie and the original?”

Del Toro wakes from his bout with narcolepsy to say “That’s a good question for the director….”

He’s talking about keeping the movie a period piece, rather than updating it to modern times. “I think you just need to see the picture. I mean, I need to see it too.”

2:14 - Becoming the Wolfman:

Benicio said “Putting the makeup on was great, it was building and that was exciting. Taking it off, that was a bit more desperate.”

“He cried like a baby,” said Baker. “He may look like a big tough guy, but he’s actually a big pussy.”

Del Toro was asked if he studied any animal behavior in order to get into the role, and he quips “I checked out Emily Blunt.” Clearly it was meant as a joke, but it just came off really creepy.

Del Toro is talking about how great it was to have Anthony Hopkins on set “Not just as an actor, but as a person.” He literally seems like he’s about to fall asleep.

2:11 - On the decision to get involved:

Del Toro is talking about how he loved the Lon Chaney Jr. role in the original movies. Del Toro’s agent saw a poster of The Wolfman in Del Toro’s house, and he said “I’m going to go to Universal and talk to them about this.” So start buying posters, folks.

Emily Blunt heard Anthony Hopkins and “Benny” were involved in the film, so she said it was pretty easy to make the decision to take the role.

2:08 - The Wolfman clip:

Benicio is sleepily introducing a clip of footage from the movie. No one has seen it yet, except del Toro “But without sound! So I want to hear this.”

Mediocre whoops and hollers.

Murky shots of a Wolfman running through the woods, and turn of the century townsfolk finding an eviscerated body.

A man runs home and melts down his mother’s silver spoons and makes bullets.

Anthony Hopkins walks down the stairs, he’s playing Del Toro’s father.

Hugo Weaving, better known as Agent Smith, plays the head Wolf hunter.

It’s all shot in period, and looks pretty good… except del Toro looks oddly out of place.

This just makes me wish that Hopkins was playing Van Helsing in this. Granted, he’s not in the original, but he’s a kickass monster hunter.

2:04 - Rick Baker, Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt take the stage:

Universal has brought out Rick Baker, sorry… “the legendary Rick Baker” to talk about Wolfman.

When Baker heard that Universal was remaking The Wolfman, he called everyone he knew at Universal and said “I have to be involved with this.”

Two surprise guests, Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro.

Baker said what’s important is that they didn’t want to make a CGI version of the Wolfman, but they wanted it to actually be a guy in the suit.