Liev Schreiber is the new Stryker in WOLVERINE!

20th Century Fox have done the right thing by pushing back the release date of Wolverine from late 2008 to a May 1st 2009 opening. This gives the crew that little extra breathing room to complete post-production after what should be a hectic filming schedule because of the two upcoming strikes. Variety are also telling us that Liev Schreiber is in final talks for the William Stryker role that Brian Cox absolutely owned in X-Men 2. Schreiber will be playing a younger version of Stryker because as the character says in X2, 'Wolverine hasn't aged a day' but Stryker's only human so time has not been his friend in X-Men 2. This X-Men prequel is set to begin some thirty years before the events of the first movie...

I find this casting interesting on a number of different levels. First of all back in February when Brian Cox was on the Jonathan Ross show here in the U.K. he claimed he had already been asked to star in the movie and that he was expecting the crew to use the same anti-aging CGI effects that were used on Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the last X-Men movie. So either they think this technology is not up to scratch or they have decided to go the old fashioned way by casting someone younger but whatever the case it is an interesting thing to think about. What does this mean for Magneto for example? Will they dump McKellen and Stewart for most of the scenes and cast young for that too? I like Liev Schrieber, I think he's extremely under-rated and the only thing that has stopped him getting the big roles is some of the bad career choices he has made. I absolutely adored his performance in the Scream trilogy and he's great in The Manchurian Candidate. As you all know he was my first choice for the Harvey Dent role in The Dark Knight for many years, mainly because he's so good at playing a good character on the outside but with the projection that his mind is somewhere in that dark place. He looks a little like a politician who has that kind of goofy smile where your not sure if it's sincere or not, which was just perfect for Dent. Aaron Eckhart though is a fine choice still. If you watch Thank You for Smoking, it's almost an extended audition for the part. Back to Wolverine then, the film has the luxury of the lucrative first May weekend where the summer blockbusters officially start. Previously the film was set to have the weird Autumn release in 2008 but now this May opening will see Fox push the movie like they did X-Men 2 and Spider-Man 3 earlier this year, with the competition on the same weekend so far only coming from the Disney toon movie G-Force.

Of course Hugh Jackman stars in the lead role for of Logan for the fourth time in his career and having read the script I can tell you the majority of the film is a Wolverine vs. Victor Creed flick. Creed is so far uncast. Gavin Hood whose latest movie Rendition is out this weekend will begin shooting the movie in Australia before moving to New Zealand and then New Orleans in November. Hopefully the added breathing space before the movie is released and the recent Skip Woods re-write will have improved this draft considerably and with Fox pushing the movie as their 2009 May tentpole, they must seem pretty confident about the film's success. To keep up do date with Wolverine check out our movie tracker page which is now being updated with this latest piece of news!