Ever since X-Men Origins: Wolverine hit cinemas, there’s been endless speculation about the sequel, which Fox started working on almost the moment the first movie came out. Now THR’s Showbiz 411 is saying that things are moving forward on Wolverine 2, with Christopher MacQuarrie finishing the script he was commissioned to write last August.
The movie will send Wolverine to Japan, and is based on a popular comic cycle by Frank Miller and Chris Claremont, which sees the Adamantium skeletoned superhero heading off to Asia and getting caught up dealing with ninjas. Apparently there will be a few changes though, with the story given a romantic angle when Wolverine falls in love with a Japanese woman.
The current plan is apparently to start shooting next January, partly because Jackman is already booked up until then with the likes of Real Steel. Fox is yet to decide on a director for the movie (the helmer of the first film, Gavin Hood, has previously said he isn’t attached to the sequel), and with 10 months to go, the script could change a lot during rewrites.
Incidentally, the man who broke this latest news, Roger Friedman, is the same guy who got fired from Fox News (corporate sibling of film’s maker) for writing a review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, based on a pirated workprint he’d illegally downloaded. However that doesn’t seem to have put him off talking about the sequel.