After the fiasco that was Knight And Day, many may have thought that was it for James Mangold as a top-flight action director and that he’d go back to the more sedate and better received likes of Walk The Line and 3:10 To Yuma. However Fox seems to think he’s got what it takes, as after sifting through a pile of possibilities, they’ve offered him the job of directing The Wolverine.
Mangold was on a shortlist that surfaced a couple weeks ago for people to replace the departed Darren Aronofsky, which included Jose Padilha, Doug Liman, Antoine Fuqua, Mark Romanek, Justin Lin, Gavin O’Connor and Gary Shore. At the time, few thought Mangold would be particularly high on that list, but Deadline says he’s the man Fox has chosen.
To be honest, Mangold’s hiring may have something to do with Hugh Jackman having director approval. Hugh worked with Mangold on Kate & Leopold, which was a truly hideous film, but does mean they have a relationship, while he’d never collaborated with anyone else on the list.
Mangold hasn’t signed on yet, but negotiations are about to get under way. The Wolverine already has a script by Christopher McQuarrie, with Fox eyeing an autumn/winter shoot for the film (that said, if Jackman takes Les Miserables, as we reported earlier, that may cause a few scheduling headaches). James Mangold is undoubtedly a less interesting choice that Aronofsky, and he does have a tendency to make either very good or very bad movies, with little in between. Let’s just hope with this X-Men tale, which is largely set in Japan, he’ll manage to bury the ghost of Knight And Day and create something memorable.