After well over a year of rumor and hearsay, Twentieth Century Fox have revealed Wolverine will be helmed by Academy Award-winning director Gavin Hood. Set for a late 2008 release and written by Troy screenwriter David Benioff, the X-Men spin-off will delve into the origin of the character - played for a fourth time by Hugh Jackman - and combine accepted comic book lore with more recent takes by Frank Miller.
Continuing what seems to be an ongoing trend among comic book adaptations, the studio’s decision to hand the job over to the South African director of Tsotsi may come as a surprise to many fans. After all, Brett Ratner had been rumored to take the reigns once more following his success with X-Men: The Last Stand, while Underworld director Len Wiseman had reportedly expressed interest as well.
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Fans of the mutant franchise may recall the initial shock over Fox’s decision to have Bryan Singer direct the first X-Men film on the back of The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil. Of course, Singer went on to become the director-of-choice for superhero films, departing the production hell of X3 to work on Superman Returns. Ang Lee was another left-field choice for Hulk, though the merits of that decision will be debated for years to come.
Speaking in favor of Gavin Hood, Hugh Jackman - who will also produce the film - had this to say:
“I have long been a fan of Gavin’s work and know he will make a masterful film with the character intensity and action beats the fans expect.”
If you ask me, intense characters and rhythmic action certainly won’t go astray after the relatively abysmal and emotionally clumsy third X-Men instalment, so I’m happy so long as Ratner steers clear of the project. Whether or not the film is as exciting and intelligent as Singer’s contributions is yet to be seen. However - as someone reasonably indifferent towards the Wolverine character - I sure hope we get a few other cool mutants to avoid what could essentially be a sword-fighting/torture flick.
Then again, nothing could possibly disappoint me more than last year’s ‘effort’.
Source: Variety
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4 Comments
Didnt we already get 3 Wolverine movies? I will never turn down a Superhero flick, but I hope they have an interesting story and not a rehash of Weapon X again.
Unfortunately Chip, the studios may believe that since some of the moviegoers haven’t been exposed to Weapon X, that may be exactly what we get!
We can only hope they move forward on his life, but as experience has shown us, movies tend to touch on the past to explain the present story line, and his past, itself, can be used to show his development into what we’ve already seen…
I’m not saying that’s what I want, it’s just my educated guess. We’ll see.
Bruce Simmons
Chip,
LOL, yeah… good point. My hope is that due to those three films they consider the groundwork already laid down and can move directly into a cool adventure story.
Personally I like the idea of bringing in directors from outside the genre to give a fresh take on things. Sometimes this works really well (X-Men 1 & 2, and I’m betting on Iron Man) and other times it backfires (Hulk).
Vic
I actually liked Ang Lee’s take on Hulk… but the last half hour completely ruined it for me. I know we’re talking about a gamma-ray-produced green monster film… but I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to accept that ridiculous villain (whatever he’s called).
As for Wolverine… I’ll hold off on any preconceptions as much as I can. After all, Hugh Jackman was openly saying how awesome X3 was going to be prior to its release, so I’ve lost respect for his opinion. Didn’t he say it was gonna be the best one? He obviously cares little for substance.
We’ll see, though. Perhaps he was simply hyping it up contractually.
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