Ever since Darren Aronofsky walked away from the director’s chair for the X-Men franchise installment The Wolverine in March, there’s been much speculation, but not a lot of actual news, as to who would take over the job.
Variety has been on the case, however, and has compiled a list of eight candidates it feels that the studio is looking at for the gig. They are –
- Antoine Fuqua (Training Day)
- Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity)
- Justin Lin (Fast Five)
- James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma)
- Gavin O’Connor (Miracle)
- Jose Padilha (Elite Squad, the RoboCop reboot)
- Mark Romanek (Never Let Me Go)
- Gary Shore (commercial director)
For the most part, this is a very interesting list. Most of the names here are ones you wouldn’t automatically associate with a movie like this, but then again neither was Aronofsky. However, knowing Fox, the hiring might just come down to one important factor – availability.
With X-Men: First Class opening next weekend, Fox will want to move quickly to get a new X-Men project in motion if First Class does the good box office it is expected to do.The long mooted Deadpool film is a long shot for going into production quickly mostly due to the fact that attached star Ryan Reynolds has a pretty busy schedule at the moment. While they do have a fourth film in the original X-Men franchise in development, Fox has a script that is reportedly ready to be shot with The Wolverine. I would not be surprised if we saw some real activity on this in the next month or two.
