With the world still riding high on Marvel thanks to The Avengers‘ third straight weekend win in a row, it’s what else will come out of the comics company in the next few years that is certainly gaining everyone’s attention. While Disney and Marvel are concerned with putting together that Marvel Cinematic Universe, 20th Century Fox is still tending to their highly successful X-Men franchise. With First Class 2 on the way, we also have The Wolverine set to hit theaters next year. With plenty of talk but little action so far, it seems things are ready to kick into high gear as now we know just when the film is aiming to start rolling cameras.
Lead actor Hugh Jackman unveiled on his Twitter this weekend that shooting for the upcoming sequel will begin this August in Australia. Production is also expected to shoot for a little while in Japan, where the film was previously said to be mostly set along with the details that Wolverine will indeed face The Silver Samurai. Australia will be home to the stage shot aspects of the movie, while Japan will involve the scenic shots that are best for on-location filming.
The shoot is said to cost about $80 million, which seems relatively low given superhero movies these days, but when factoring in promotion, and all that other business stuff, it adds up. Giving the lower cost and the less-than-a-year-until-release production start, it’s very much unlikely that the original idea that director James Mangold would shoot two versions of the film (a PG-13 and an R-rated version) is highly unlikely at this point, as it has always been.
Casting should be going underway soon, and we’ll eventually have a cast that forms around Jackman’s titular character. Fox President Tom Rothman revealed at CinemaCon to ComingSoon that, “A great number of Japanese actors will be in it and it’s based on the very famous run of the comics…I can just tell you on behalf of [Jackman], his goal is to make the ultimate, bad ass, berserker rage Wolverine.”
There may be chances for other previous actors to also pop up as well alongside Jackman. The Wolverine is said to be a standalone film, and yet it also has some sequel mentality when compared to the last Wolverine outing X-Men: Origins. Liev Schreiber could still very much show up as Sabretooth along with other X-alumni if there’s a small place for them, but it’s ultimately unexpected as the film is still very much seen as a Wolverine-only adventure.
The Wolverine is set for a release on July 26th, 2013.
