Finally Fox and
Hugh Jackman have made their decision on who will replace the long-gone Darren Aronofsky in the director's chair for
The Wolverine and that man is
James Mangold, the very fine genre-travelling director of Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma and Knight & Day.
If talks go well, this will be his first comic book movie but he has been so adept at finding a voice in musical biopics, westerns, horror film and perhaps importantly large-scale summer actioners, that we are sure that he'll ease into it just fine. Shooting begins in the fall and now the prospect of The Wolverine looks promising again with a solid helmer behind the camera and what everyone says is a kick-ass, all-Japanese set script from The Usual Suspects writer
Christopher McQuarrie, who was also responsible for some of the ideas in the Bryan Singer X-Men movies. Mangold beat out Antoine Fuqua (Brooklyn's Finest), Gavin O'Connnor (Warrior) and
a bunch of other mediocre at best names, his only real rival seemed to be Mark Romanek (Never Let Me Go, One Hour Photo) but he recently revealed
he turned down the project months ago. So The Wolverine is a go-project again and despite our loathsome opinion of the first one, there's better talent behind the script and the camera on this one and hopefully everyone is just a little more older and wiser about past failures. Based on
Chris Claremont and
Frank Millers 1982 bloody limited series will be an all Asian affair and expect the supporting players casting to begin soon.