X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a planned 2009 film to be directed by Gavin Hood and starring Hugh Jackman as the title character. It is a prequel to the X-Men film trilogy, focusing on Wolverine when his skeleton was bonded with the indestructible metal adamantium. The film is slated for a May 1, 2009 release.
PremiseThe film is set seventeen years before the first X-Men, and will center on Wolverine's violent past, and his early encounters with William Stryker, the Weapon X program and other mutants, including his complex relationship with Sabretooth/Victor Creed. The Blob and John Wraith may also feature, as well as Vietnam War flashbacks and a love interest for Wolverine.
Benioff has recently confirmed that Wolverine's love interest, Silver Fox will appear in the movie.
CastHugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine: The mutant and future X-Man. Jackman, who played Wolverine in the previous films, is producer as well as star, and is being paid $20 million for the film.
Liev Schreiber is in final negotiations to portray a young William Stryker, the military general who subjected Wolverine to the adamantium experiment. Brian Cox, who played Stryker in X2, had expressed interest in reprising the role, using computer generated imagery to make him appear younger.
Robert Knepper has been cast in an unnamed role.
Kodi Smit-McPhee as the young Logan.
Tyler Mane had expressed interest in reprising the role of Sabretooth, but confirmed on his MySpace page that he will not be playing the part. Michelle Monaghan has been approached for the role of Silver Fox. If she can work out her schedule, she would take the part.
ProductionDavid Benioff was hired to pen the screenplay for the spin-off film Wolverine in October 2004. Benioff was a comic book fan and had pursued the project for two years.In preparing to write the script, he reread Barry Windsor-Smith's "Weapon X" story (1991), as well as Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's Wolverine limited series (1982).Jackman collaborated with Benioff on the script, which aims to be more of a character piece compared with the previous X-Men films.In October 2006 the script was finished, and Jackman stated there would be a year before shooting,as he was scheduled to start filming Australia (2008) during 2007.
Gavin Hood was announced as director of the project in July 2007 for a 2008 release.Previously, Brett Ratner,Len Wiseman Bryan Singer and Alexandre Aja all expressed interest in the film. Hood explained that while he was not a comic book fan, he "realized that the character of Wolverine, I think his great appeal lies in the fact that he's someone who in some ways, is filled with a great deal of self-loathing by his own nature and he's constantly at war with his own nature." The director described the film's themes as focusing on Wolverine's inner struggle between his animalistic savagery and noble human qualities. Hood enjoyed the previous films, but set out to give the spin-off a different feel.
In October, Fox announced a May 1, 2009 release date, and that the film's title would be X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fox also issued a "major SOS" to the leading agencies in order to find someone who would be able to perform a speedy rewrite of the script before the 2007–08 Writers' Guild of America strike. James Vanderbilt and Scott Silver (8 Mile) took the task of finishing the script before the strike began.
Shooting will begin in January 2008 at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia,before moving to New Zealand and New Orleans.The shoot will last up until June, because of potential reshoots on Jackman's other project, Australia. In October 2007, Harry Gregson-Williams signed on as composer.
SequelHood speculated that there could be a sequel, which may be set in Japan.Such a location was the subject of Claremont and Miller's series, which was not in the first film as Jackman felt “what we need to do is establish who [Logan] is and find out how he became Wolverine."
