Movie and TV Werewolves Through the Years

Beware of the full moon! Werewolves don’t have the glamorous reputation that their vampire counterparts do, but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from making tons of movies and TV series about the shapeshifting creatures.

One of the most famous lycanthropes from the big screen is Scott Howard, a.k.a. Teen Wolf, portrayed by Michael J. Fox in the 1985 film of the same name. The hit comedy spawned a sequel (Teen Wolf Too) and later served as the inspiration for MTV’s drama series Teen Wolf, which returned to screens as a movie in January 2023 six years after its series finale.

While Teen Wolf was still in production, Fox landed the role that would make him a movie star: Marty McFly in Back to the Future. At one point, he was filming both movies at once. “He would leave the Teen Wolf set at 4 p.m. and run down the street to South Pasadena, where they were shooting Back to the Future and shoot from 5 p.m. to midnight, and then come back to us at 7 a.m. the next morning,” Teen Wolf producer Scott Rosenfelt told Yahoo Entertainment in August 2020. “It was very exciting for Michael at the time, and we realized it might help our movie, which, of course, it did!”

Teen Wolf was finished before Back to the Future, but producers decided to hold its release until after the sci-fi comedy hit theaters. “We rode the Michael J. Fox wave,” Rosenfelt explained. “I think we would have done all right anyway, but having Back to the Future open right before us propelled Teen Wolf into studio numbers.”

When MTV rebooted the iconic film as a TV series in 2011, Tyler Posey took on the role of the titular werewolf (named Scott McCall in the show). The Truth or Dare actor said he never spoke to Fox about Teen Wolf, but he did once speak to Jason Bateman, who played Scott Howard’s cousin Todd Howard in Teen Wolf Too.

“I met him at the Teen Choice Awards, my first one ever,” Posey told Yahoo Entertainment in 2018, referring to his 2011 appearance at the event. “I went up to him and said, ‘Hey, buddy, I’m a huge fan. I’m the new Teen Wolf, by the way.’ And then we had a mini discussion about the prosthetic makeup.”

The Arrested Development star was less impressed, however, when Posey yelled, “Teen Wolf Too” during the awards ceremony. “I’m so sorry, Jason Bateman,” the Jane the Virgin alum said. “I love him. He’s just a phenomenal director, and I’m just a huge fan of his.”

Keep scrolling to see which actors have played werewolves in movies and TV shows: