Wolverine ravages Japan

According to Variety, Hugh Jackman is officially working on Wolverine 2. After X-Men Origins: Wolverine scored at the box-office this weekend, taking $85 million in the US alone, it was almost guaranteed that a sequel would be in order. Jackman had already hinted at a sequel in an interview with MTV, saying that he was a big fan of the Japan-set stories in the Wolverine comics and that was the storyline he would like to see in the sequel:

There are so many areas of that Japanese story, I love the idea of this kind of anarchic character, the outsider, being in this world — I can see it aesthetically, too — full of honor and tradition and customs and someone who’s really anti-all of that, and trying to negotiate his way. The idea of the samurai, too -  and the tradition there. It’s really great. In the comic book he gets his ass kicked by a couple of samurai, not even mutants. He’s shocked by that at first.

It was teased in a pre-release screening that X-Men Origins: Wolverine would feature multiple endings, including one showing what happens to Deadpool after the final battle, and another showing Wolverine at a bar in Japan, trying to “drink to remember”, it would seem this second easter-egg ending is a direct set up for Hugh Jackman’s proposed sequel. Wolverine 2 is set to be produced by Fox and Jackman’s Seed Productions:

Fox and Seed are in development on a sequel to “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which topped the domestic box office over the weekend. The Seed partners have begun planning the sequel, which they are squarely focusing on the samurai storyline originated in the comic series, and whose Japanese locale was teased after the film’s final credits. A writer has yet to be hired. Seed will produce.

I for one enjoyed X-Men Origins: Wolverine, whilst not a high-brow comic book tale ala Dark Knight or Watchmen, Wolverine was a great comic book movie. Yes the film changed peripheral characters backgrounds and traits, and yes there are slight continuity clashes with the other X-Men movies, but overall Wolverine was just what I wanted to see in a summer popcorn comic book movie: plenty of kick-ass action, some great (and some not so great) special effects, and a thoroughly bad-ass protagonist in Wolverine…