WOLVERINE (In Development)

• WOLVERINE TO BE UNLIKE ANY OTHER COMIC FILM?

Wolverine is Hugh Jackman

Will The Wolverine be ready to go before cameras next year,director James Mangold spoke with The Playlist about his plans for the sequelto the 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

“You could actually just tell a story about this amazingcharacter from the start, just the way they do when you really read a comic,”Mangold said via telephone Friday. “You don’t have to spend the first hoursaying how they were born; you can actually just find them in an emotionalspace, in the middle of action, and what happens is you’re not crowded withcutting to nine other action heroes. You can really make a movie about thisdude.”

"It's a kind of adventure following such a uniquecharacter also in a really unique environment," he says of his reasons fortaking the job. "I mean, the fact that half of the characters in thismovie speak Japanese, this is like a foreign-language superhero movie that's asmuch a drama and a detective story and a film noir, with high-octane action asit is anything like a conventional tentpole film."

Mangold also explains that he's discussed the project withthe formerly-attached Darren Aronofsky and that, while the film still featuresChristopher McQuarrie's screenplay, he and Mark Bomback have gone through andrewritten the entire thing, comparing the version he plans to make to classicslike The Outlaw Josey Wales and Chinatown.

"[It's] much more about Logan getting lost in this veryunique and insulated world of Japanese culture, gangster culture, and ninjaculture," he explains. "The fighting is going to be unique becauseit's all influenced by Japanese martial arts... I think more than anything,it's a character piece, asking really interesting questions that are whatpulled me in about what it means to be immortal. What is it to live forever,when you lose everyone you've ever loved? Either you watch them get killed, oryou just lose them by attrition. What is it to feel the burden of savingmankind through all of its mistakes, over and over and over again? What's thetoll it takes on you as a living being that is somehow living thisFrankensteinian, eternal life?"

“I like to think that we’re out to make that Wolverine moviethat people have been looking forward to seeing, which takes on some of thedarker and more intense aspects of the character, and his own journey, thathave not necessarily been possible in the origin story that they did orobviously when he’s sharing so much time as a character with so many others inX-Men.”

Well it definitely seems that the Wolverine is gettingcloser and closer to going into production, hopefully the film will startshooting next year for a 2013 release.