‘Knight and Day’ Director James Mangold to Direct ‘The Wolverine’

With X-Men: First Class blowing people’s expectations out of the water, there has been some more movement in other X-Men film properties, because Fox just loves to strike while the iron is hot.

For a while, the Wolverine sequel was held up in pre-production hell because they couldn’t seem to lock in a director. Darren Aronofsky was originally set to direct, but he dropped out back in March. Now, Fox is announcing that 3:10 to Yuma and Walk The Line director James Mangold is a lock and the film will continue into production. From Deadline:

Negotiations are about to get underway, but I’m told that Mangold will take the helming job on the sequel to the X-Men spinoff film, a post that became vacant when Darren Aronofsky dropped out of the film in March. I’d heard that Mangold was on a very short list coming into this week, along with Warrior director Gavin O’Connor and Brooklyn’s Finest helmer Antoine Fuqua.

I’ve heard that Fox will look to start principal photography in the fall. Scripted by Christopher McQuarrie, The Wolverine takes place mostly in Japan.

The main problem that Aronofsky had when going into the film was that he’d have to leave his family and work it Japan for up to 6 months. It seems that Mangold is more into the idea. We hope to hear more and get a glimpse at the film’s look and feel as we enter production later this year.