Hugh Jackman talks Wolverine rewrites and status

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

We’ll still see Marvel’s sinewy shredded on the big screen, but THE WOLVERINE will just slash through Japan a little later than anticipated.

Hugh Jackman is out promoting REAL STEEL, a movie with alloys far more blunt than the razor-fisted mutant, and talked with The Playlist about the ongoing delays: “Now that [director James Mangold’s] on board, we’re ready to go. For [LES MISERABLES] to work, we would have had to start WOLVERINE, basically, yesterday. So when we needed to press the button, we weren’t quite ready. So it will happen straight after.“

Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) penned the script, although previously attached director Darren Aronofsky did some tinkering, and now the screenplay is getting another rewrite by Mark Bomback (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, CONSTANTINE, JACK THE GIANT KILLER).

But Jackman remains confident in the script: “When a director takes over any script they need to make it their movie. So Jim hired Mark to help him make the movie his own. Darren had worked on the script himself and taken it in a certain direction that was right for him. And that would have been a great version of the movie. I’ve seen Jim’s version now and, you know, Jim saw things that weren’t working for him that were working for Darren. And I’ve got to hand it to Fox and to Jim, it’s easy when you start with the best script we’ve had from Chris McQuarrie. Which is why Darren signed on. So once you have that, that’s 80, 85 percent of your movie.“

As we’ve heard, the movie will be set in Japan and finds Logan meeting his true love and facing a ninja clan. But the story won’t just draw from Frank Miller’s initial miniseries — it also seems to be sampling from the Uncanny X-Men comic arc (which featured villains Silver Samurai and Viper, both expected in the movie). “It’s a little darker and, I think, a little more true to the character. If you read all of [the Japanese saga] there is a lot of it that is a little disparate and some of it’s got X-Men in it. There’s a wedding and all that. So we take license with that.“