With Hugh Jackman currently on promotional duties for his latest movie Real Steel (our review HERE), talk has inevitably turned to the current status of The Wolverine movie. Following previous director Darren Aronofskys departure from the project earlier this year the sequel to the prequel of the X-Men trilogy has found itself slipping further and further back on 20th Century Foxs release schedules. With replacement director James Mangold (3:10 To Yuma, Knight & Day) now on board (we think anyway with all the delays) and with a reportedly excellent script from The Usual Suspects penman Chris McQuarrie that adapts the Frank Miller/ Chris Claremont era of the character and further inspired by the Clint Eastwood western The Outlaw Josey Wales, Jackman seems confident that The Wolverine is back on track. In a new interview with MTV News, Jackman suggested that he would love to make the film R-rated;
"There's such great temptation to make an R-rated Wolverine. I've always felt that, and I know a lot of fans would like that. If there's ever going to be a superhero that is going to be R-rated, it's going to be Wolverine."
However studio executives, while tempted to make a darker, more adult version are obviously reluctant to alienate younger fans of the character now well established as being family friendly in the previous movies and the X-Men cartoon series. Jackman also acknowledged the fact that it would be difficult to take the character in this direction by adding;
You see it in their eyes. He's everything to them. You need to have a really good reason to exclude those fans."
In another interview, this time with The Guardian, Jackman promises that lessons have been learned from his previous solo outing in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
I think we've got the chance to nail the character this time, to do the hole-in-one. We haven't managed that yet. On the last movie, we complicated it with too many other characters. And there'll be more women this time, which is good. The last one was so masculine!
He goes on to add;
The new film will go more into the character. I don't think we've ever seen his rage expressed properly. We're letting go with this one of the whole 'Who am I? Where did I come from? Oh no, I've lost my memory' thing. I feel like that's sent us all to sleep.
Filming on The Wolverine had been due to start next month in Vancouver but this has been further delayed by Jackmans commitment to The Kings Speech director Tom Hoopers film version of Les Miserables which he chose to make next instead. It now looks more likely that it will be well into next year before he has the chance to don the adamantium claws once more for a 2013 release date.