‘The Wolverine’ has had quite a few hiccups since the project was announced. After the disappointing news that director Darren Aronofsky would not be directing Hugh Jackman in the follow up to the unbearably horrible ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, natural disasters in Japan forced the production to move elsewhere. Today, courtesy of Collider, we found out that the somewhere else will be Jackman’s home continent of Australia.
Under the direction of ‘3:10 to Yuma’ director James Mangold, Jackman and the whole ‘Wolverine’ crew are set to head down under later this year after production wraps on ‘Les Miserables’ to begin production on the film based on the famed mini-series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller that followed Logan as he found love and tragedy in the Land of the Rising Sun.
‘The Wolverine’ is supposed to generate about $80 million in production costs, 720 cast and crew jobs, and 2000 extra jobs for the Sydney, Australia economy. Collider also notes that the first Wolverine film was filmed in Australia as well, but I’d prefer to think as little about that atrocity of a movie as possible.
Though not much is known about the official plot details, those familiar with the history of James Howlett know that he ventures to Japan to uncover parts of his past in the Japanese criminal underworld. There have been talks of a rated R and a PG-13 version of the film from both Jackman and Mangold, but it’s almost entirely unlikely that the theatrical version of the film will rated R, even though that would be an awesome thing to see. What we do know for sure is that the film is slated to open on July 26, 2013.