Teen Wolf (2011 TV series)



Teen Wolf is an American television series developed by Jeff Davis for MTV. It is loosely based on the 1985 film of the same name, and stars Tyler Posey as a teenager named Scott McCall, who is bitten by a werewolf and must cope with how it affects his life and the lives of those closest to him, and Dylan O'Brien as "Stiles" Stilinski, Scott's best friend. The series has received generally positive reviews from critics and is a fan favorite on social media.

Teen Wolf premiered on June 5, 2011, following the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. On July 9, 2015, Teen Wolf was renewed for a sixth season of 20 episodes, which premiered on November 15, 2016. On July 21, 2016, the cast announced at Comic Con that the sixth season would be the series' final.

Plot
The series revolves around social outcast Scott McCall, a high school student living in the town of Beacon Hills. Scott's life drastically changes when he is bitten by a werewolf the night before sophomore year, becoming one himself. He must henceforth learn to balance his problematic new identity with his day-to-day teenage life.

In season one, Scott and his human best friend "Stiles" Stilinski begin to encounter other characters with a connection to the supernatural goings-on in Beacon Hills. Scott's initial love interest is Allison Argent, a classmate of his who comes from a family of werewolf hunters. Her best friend is popular girl and genius Lydia Martin, who later discovers she is a banshee. Scott and Stiles routinely clash with Lydia's aggressive boyfriend, local jock Jackson Whittemore, as well as Derek Hale, a mysterious werewolf with a dark past. As the show progresses, Scott is joined by new friends in Malia Tate, a werecoyote; Kira Yukimura, a Japanese fox spirit and Scott's second love interest; and Liam Dunbar, a young werewolf with anger issues.

Cast and characters

 * Tyler Posey as Scott McCall: Scott is turned into a werewolf in the series premiere and, alongside his friend Stiles, begins to uncover the complicated supernatural world of Beacon Hills, California.
 * Crystal Reed as Allison Argent (seasons 1–3): Scott's love interest, Allison, descends from a long line of werewolf hunters. Her formidable prowess with a bow and arrow is an asset to the team in encounters with the shapeshifters and monsters that roam Beacon Hills.
 * Dylan O'Brien as Stiles Stilinski: Stiles is Scott's childhood best friend, with a talent for solving mysteries and a fierce loyalty to those closest to him.
 * Tyler Hoechlin as Derek Hale (seasons 1–4): An older werewolf from a prominent werewolf family in Beacon Hills, Derek starts off with an hostile relationship to Scott and his "pack" of friends but comes to be a valuable ally.
 * Holland Roden as Lydia Martin: A popular girl at Beacon Hills High and a close friend of Allison's, Lydia initially tries to play down her formidable intelligence; she is a genius. After an encounter with Derek's villainous uncle Peter Hale in season one, her own supernatural abilities&mdash;those of a banshee&mdash;begin to manifest.
 * Colton Haynes as Jackson Whittemore (seasons 1–2): Lydia's shallow boyfriend Jackson antagonises Scott and Stiles relentlessly but suffers from inner self-hatred. This causes his encounter with a werewolf's bite to bring out a deadly creature within.
 * Shelley Hennig as Malia Tate (recurring season 3; main seasons 4–6): The daughter of Peter Hale and a werecoyote assassin, Malia was adopted into a local Beacon Hills family for her own safety. After her new family is killed, she spends her formative years as a fully transformed feral coyote. After rejoining the human social world, she develops a blunt, no-nonsense personality, while adjusting to teenage life as a fish out of water.
 * Arden Cho as Kira Yukimura (recurring season 3; main seasons 4–5): Kira moves to Beacon Hills as monsters from Japanese mythology are beginning to plague the lives of her new classmates; she herself discovers that she is a thunder kitsune with profound swordsmanship skills and electrical powers.
 * Dylan Sprayberry as Liam Dunbar (recurring season 4; main seasons 5–6): Liam is a younger rival of Scott's with anger issues who Scott is forced to transform into a werewolf in order to save his life. Liam's anger gives him an uncommon degree of strength for a young werewolf, and he comes to develop a real respect for his mentor, Scott.
 * Linden Ashby as Sheriff Stilinski (recurring seasons 1–5; main season 6): Stiles' father is initially reluctant to help his son and Scott with their escapades but is later brought into their supernatural secret. From then on, he assists his son by deploying the resources of the police department to help when he can.
 * Melissa Ponzio as Melissa McCall (recurring seasons 1–5; main season 6): Scott's mother, a local nurse, becomes an invaluable ally of the gang once brought in on their secret, concealing unexplained supernatural occurrences and saving the lives of Scott and his pack members many times over.
 * J.R. Bourne as Chris Argent (recurring seasons 1–5; main season 6): Allison's father is a born and raised werewolf hunter who is highly effective at what he does. He later comes around to see Scott as a vital protector of Beacon Hills and dedicates himself to supporting his cause.

Episodes
Teen Wolf premiered on June 5, 2011, following the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. The second season premiered on June 3, 2012, after the 2012 MTV Movie Awards. On July 12, 2012, Teen Wolf was renewed for a third season, which includes 24 episodes and the production location was moved to Los Angeles, California.

The third season premiered on June 3, 2013, at 10 pm, giving the series a new high on ratings. A fourth season premiered on June 23, 2014. On July 24, 2014, MTV renewed Teen Wolf for a fifth season of 20 episodes, which will be split into two parts, and premiered June 29, 2015.

On July 9, 2015, Teen Wolf was renewed for a sixth season of 20 episodes. Showrunner Jeff Davis confirmed that Tyler Posey, Dylan O'Brien, Holland Roden, Shelley Hennig and Dylan Sprayberry would be reprising their roles as Scott McCall, "Stiles" Stilinski, Lydia Martin, Malia Tate and Liam Dunbar respectively.

Development and production
In June 2009, MTV announced that they would be adapting the 1985 film Teen Wolf into a new television series "with a greater emphasis on romance, horror and werewolf mythology".

MTV's Teen Wolf series was a re-imagining of the earlier Michael J. Fox comedy film, which was itself a reimagining of the classic 1957 AIP film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf. The film had been previously adapted for television, as an animated series aired on CBS in 1986–87.

For the MTV series, creator and executive producer, Jeff Davis, aimed to develop a darker, sexier and edgier version than the 1985 film. Davis' desire was to make a thriller with comedic overtones but in a tone more similar to that of the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys. According to Davis, it all started with an idea to do a homage to Stand by Me, where in the beginning, the kids go out and search for a body in the woods and it's not quite what they expect. The look of the show was inspired in part by Guillermo del Toro's creatures in Pan's Labyrinth; the producers described the werewolves as beautiful, elegant and scary, at the same time.

Once the show was a go, Davis lined up Australian director Russell Mulcahy, who added the horror to the project. Mulcahy directed the pilot presentation and serves as executive producer and in-house director.

Casting announcements were all announced in December 2010, with the main cast being, Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Tyler Hoechlin, Dylan O'Brien, Holland Roden, and Colton Haynes. Posey was cast as the lead Scott McCall, a dorky high-school student who after being bitten by a werewolf, starts to notice changes in himself, Reed playing Allison Argent, a sweet new girl at school who is immediately attracted to Scott, Hoechlin playing Derek Hale, a handsome local boy who in fact is a vicious and predatory werewolf, and O'Brien playing Stiles, Scott's best friend. Roden playing Lydia Martin, Jackson Whittemore's popular and controlling girlfriend, and Haynes playing Jackson Whittemore, Scott's lacrosse teammate and rival.

Production on twelve episodes began in October 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia. MTV released a sneak peek of the first eight minutes of the pilot on their website, on May 31, 2011. Teen Wolf episodes are composed by music composer Dino Meneghin. As of Season 2, the opening credits of the show changed dramatically to a longer format featuring the main characters appearing whilst performing an action (such as Colton Haynes performing a lacrosse throw), along with the respective names of the actors.

The new opening credits also feature the show's new theme song. In June 2012, the series received conditional approval for a California film and TV tax credit. At Comic-Con 2012, the cast confirmed that the show had been renewed for a longer third season, comprising twenty-four episodes. In June 2013, the series was selected again for a California tax credit. Roughly halfway through each episode, the series has a segment with the song Row, Row, Row Your Boat, utilizing an alternative and much darker rendition of the song. This song sequence concludes, and is explained in Season 3 when Stiles is shown to be locked in a semi-conscious dream state along with Scott.

Differences and similarities from films
Teen Wolf shares no continuity with the 1985 film Teen Wolf or its sequel, Teen Wolf Too, but does contain allusions to the film which inspired its premise. The original film is about a typical awkward basketball-playing teenager named Scott dealing with high school and life as a werewolf. In both the film and show, Scott reaps the benefits of werewolf stardom, achieving confidence and acceptance from his peers with his newly discovered powers, and has a close friend named Stiles. In the 1985 movie, Scott played basketball, whereas in the series, he plays lacrosse; Stiles wears retro British T-shirts in the TV series rather than the offensive T-shirts of the film; and Scott is transformed into a werewolf by bite in the series, whereas in the film he inherits the trait from his father.

While the Teen Wolf film is a comedy, the MTV drama is a drama which includes dark themes, violence, and gore, as well as comedic elements; series developer Jeff Davis and other producers have referred to their indebtedness to Joss Whedon's supernatural drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Davis comments that Buffy's central metaphor was "[h]igh school as a horror movie. And so the metaphor became the central concept behind Buffy, and that's how I sold [Teen Wolf]." The writers have confirmed they have no intention of including vampires but other creatures may be considered.

Critical response
The first season of the series has generated a generally positive response from professional critics, with some praising it as better quality when compared to other shows by MTV. According to Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the show holds an average score of 61 out of 100, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews", based on fourteen reviews. Metacritic also lists the show as the second-highest rated MTV series by professional critics behind Awkward.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 70% of 23 critics have given the first season a positive review. The site's consensus is: "Thanks to a charismatic lead in Tyler Posey and some dark, biting humor, Teen Wolf is a pleasant summer surprise, even if it does tread familiar ground." Linda Stasi, a writer from the New York Post, awarded the series' premiere a perfect score, stating, "Not only is it really well thought out, but the good-looking kids in the show can actually act." Verne Gay from Newsday also reserved high praise for the show, calling it a "winner and best of all, fun". David Hinckley of New York Daily News commented favorably on the series, ending his review with "Werewolves, pretty girls, dumb bullies and lacrosse. What more, really, could you ask of high school?" Film critic Rex Reed is a fan of the series, calling it "the sexiest show on television today."

Some critics had a less positive reaction toward the first episode. Troy Patterson from Slate gave it a mixed review, referring to it as "light and passably witty supernatural drama". James Poniewozik from Time magazine also had mixed feelings towards the show, saying, "The pilot isn't bad, exactly—it's well-paced if a little dour in spots and there's some decent CW-esque banter—but it's pretty much entirely what I would have expected from any supernatural teen drama". Following the first-season finale in August 2011, Ian Grey of indieWire gave the series a positive review and Angel Cohn of Television Without Pity named it the third best new show of the summer. BuddyTV ranked Teen Wolf #4 on its list of 2011's best new TV shows.

The second season of the show received even more positive reviews than the first one, and Rotten Tomatoes reports that 80% of 5 critics have given it a positive review. The third season also received positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, which reports that 100% of 11 critics gave it a positive review.

Ratings
The series premiere attracted a total of 2.17 million viewers. After airing its third episode, Teen Wolf was reported to be heading into its fourth week with tremendous momentum following a 23% increase among persons 12–34, with a 1.6 in the demo. With double digit percentage gains among total viewers and key demos, Teen Wolf was the #1 show in its timeslot with women 12–34. The first-season finale attained a series high in persons 12–34 (1.9) and 2.1 million viewers overall, as well as being first in its timeslot among teens and females 12–34.

The show's creator, Jeff Davis confirmed that the show benefits from a very signifiant online viewership, with up to 8 million streams per episode on MTV's online platforms alone. Davis cited this as a significant contributing factor to MTV renewing the show for a sixth season.

Book
In June 2012, MTV Books released the book On Fire, by Nancy Holder. The cover art features Tyler Posey with glowing yellow eyes, with a fire red background. The book tells the story of Scott McCall and the first season of Teen Wolf.
 * 2012, Nancy Holder, On Fire: A Teen Wolf Novel, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781451674477

Comic
A comic themed upon the show was released in September 2011 by Image Comics.

Broadcast
Teen Wolf is shown domestically in the United States on the basic cable channel MTV, Tuesdays at 9/8c. Canada's MuchMusic aired the series until 2014, when it was moved to the domestic version of MTV. In Quebec, the series airs on VRAK.TV.

The United Kingdom's BSkyB aired the first two seasons on pay television channel Sky Living, Thursdays 8PM GMT. BSkyB stopped broadcasting Teen Wolf after the season 1 finale.

In October 2015, the United Kingdom's Channel 5 acquired the rights to broadcast Teen Wolf on Tuesday nights at 9PM GMT. The channel premiered the first season pilot on October 27, 2015. Channel 5 has not yet made any statements about the further broadcasting of the show.

Australia's Foxtel airs the series on pay television channel Fox8, Fridays at 9:30PM. The Seven Network's primary free-to-air channel aired the first season during late night.