Hugh Jackman will be back as Wolverine in his own movie at the start of the 2009 summer movie season. Daily Variety reports that Twentieth Century Fox has announced a May 1 ’09 opening for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which will go before the lens later this year in Australia with director Gavin Hood (Rendition, Tsotsi) at the helm. The pic will carry on the billion-dollar franchise based on the popular Marvel Comics property created by Stan Lee.
Written by David Benioff (The Kite Runner, Troy), the script for Wolverine reportedly delves into the animalistic mutant’s origins and explores his relationship with Victor Creed and the Weapon X program that made him what he is. Liev Schreiber (The Omen) is in talks to play a younger version of the villainous William Stryker character, portrayed by Brian Cox in X2: X-Men United. It’s also suspected that explosive mutant Gambit will make an appearance. The film is being produced by the X-Men team of Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter. Jackman and John Palermo will also produce through their shingle Seed Prods., and Marvel’s Kevin Feige will serve as exec producer.
X2 opened in the first weekend of May and took in a whopping $86 million. The release window was also good to fellow Marvel superhero flick Spider-Man 3, which brought in a record-breaking $151 million for Sony over the weekend. However, Wolverine will have to compete with Disney’s G-Force. Not to be confused with Imagi’s and Warner Bros.’ Gatchaman (based on an anime series released as G-Force in the U.S), the CG/live-action family pic will follow an elite group of government-trained, super-intelligent animal commandos who set out to stop an evil billionaire from taking over the world. Hoyt Yeatman is directing.
Fox will follow Wolverine with James Cameron‘s 3-D vfx extravaganza Avatar on May 22 and the animated seqel Ice Age 3 on July 1 of 2009. The studio is also planning an X-Men spin-off that focuses on the Magneto character played by Ian McKellen in all three of the previous movies.
