Undeniably disappointing news ahead: Darren Aronofsky, recently nominated for an Academy Award for Black Swan, will not be directing the next Wolverine movie after all, according to sources including The Hollywood Reporter, citing a joint statement from 20th Century Fox and the director.
Though it’s hard to get too upset given Aronofsky’s stated reasons — the plan is to shoot extensively overseas (including, at one point, Japan), and Aronofsky didn’t want to be away from his family for the nearly year-long period production would have required. Fox is hoping this doesn’t slow down their plans too much; the studio said in the statement that they will “regroup and move forward aggressively” in regards to finding a new director, with Hugh Jackman still on board as the title character.
Reports of Aronofsky directing The Wolverine, as it’s currently titled, first surfaced in the early fall of last year, and was later confirmed by Fox this past November. The movie would have been a reunion for Jackman and Aronofsky, who worked together on The Fountain.
March 17th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Smart decision.
You don’t go from Oscar nomination to the fifth movie version of a one-note comic book character.
March 17th, 2011 at 11:10 am
with all that is happening in japan, i would think that filming in japan is off. i think darren A. is a great storyteller. i hope the studios change their location and get darren back.
March 17th, 2011 at 11:21 am
The location is still up in the air (no pun intended). It depends on how the nuclear containment goes and how soon they plan to start shooting. If there’s a core meltdown, then obviously they’re going to have to change locations. But the crisis could be over by the time they begin.
They just need to get somebody good. But more importantly, make the script better than the Origins: Wolverine script **gag**.
March 17th, 2011 at 11:29 am
terrible news indeed.
March 17th, 2011 at 11:43 am
Hmm, with multiple nuclear meltdowns on the travel itinerary, poor Darren Aronofsky probably got scared about the prospect of fathering Mutant-X children.
March 17th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
@Mike
Nice trolling there. At least you tried to make your comment tangentially relevant to the story instead of just saying “Wolverine sucks!” I’d love to hear you stumble around trying to explain why this is less of a valid project for Aronofsky than Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were for Nolan.
March 17th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
@Coming Curse,
In both cases, you’ve got guys getting tentpole pics, but Nolan was given free reign to reimagine and is now finishing a trilogy of his own making, and not following in the footstpes of a critically derided film. Aronofsky would, essentially, be getting very sloppy seconds and, given his sensibilities, may not enjoy the freedom Nolan got (Nolan being a less confrontational director).
March 17th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
“Undeniably disappointing”
I’ll go ahead and deny it. Darren Aronofsky is an overrated director and one of my least favorite in hollywood. I was disappointed to hear he would direct wolverine and glad he is off the project. I dont care how many oscars he wins, ive suffered through enough of his movies. DA is all about bad metaphors, simplistic morality, and shock imagery. Wolverine needs better then that.
March 17th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Well I am sure Brett Ratner is available…
March 17th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Give it back to Gavin Hood, this time with a better script than the first WOLVERINE flick. My second choice: Christopher McQuarrie.
March 17th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Awesome! Maybe now we can get that Uwe Boll or Brett Ratner directed Wolverine movie we’ve always wanted!!! Maybe they can hire the screenwriter from Megashark vs Giant Octopus too!! Honestly, I wish they would just give up on this as horribly as they’ve already mucked up these X-Men movies.
March 17th, 2011 at 7:14 pm
@hugueknot
Nolan WAS follwing in the footsteps of the critically derided ‘Batman and Robin’ which was much worse than X-Men Origins:Wolverine. And all the reports I’ve been hearing about ‘The Wolverine’ specifically indicate that it isn’t being approached as a sequel but as a stand-alone film that doesn’t reference the continuity of the previous X-films.
March 18th, 2011 at 5:36 am
Rubbish.
March 18th, 2011 at 9:16 pm
There’s a difference between getting to start, essentially, from scratch (like Nolan got to) and being the latest director to try to make something out of Wolverine still being played by the same actor as in the other, fairly recent, films.
That’s not a knock on Jackman, and I actually rather liked the first two X-Men movies (not Nolan’s Batman good, but still pretty good). It’s just that, even if the new Wolvie movie weren’t going to reference the past continuity (I hadn’t read anything about that one way or the other), you’ve got the same Wolverine. The baggage of the other movies (particularly X3 and “Origins”) is going to be there too.
It’s why WB, wisely, decided to cast a new Superman. Regardless of how you felt about Brandon Routh’s Superman, letting him wear the cape again would’ve made it difficult to separate the new movie from the stench of Superman Returns.
That’s not to say Aronofsky’s Wolverine wouldn’t have been good… The Japan storyline is a good one, so the potential was certainly there. But given FOX’s track record of not knowing what to do with their properties, and Tom Rothman’s boneheaded interference the stuff of legend, it might’ve been a tall order.