Sad panda news of the week: Darren Aronofsky is no longer directing The Wolverine, sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, spinoff of X-Men: The Last Stand, sequel to X2: X-Men United, sequel to X-Men, sequel to… no, wait, I ran out of movies.
He  was announced as director last year, and I know I’m not the only person who was super excited to see what would happen when you took the guy behind Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan and let him do a superhero movie set in Japan starring Hugh Jackman.
Aronofsky bowed out of the project citing family concerns:
As I talked more about the film with my collaborators at Fox, it became clear that the production of ‘The Wolverine’ would keep me out of the country for almost a year. I was not comfortable being away from my family for that length of time. I am sad that I won’t be able to see the project through, as it is a terrific script and I was very much looking forward to working with my friend, Hugh Jackman, again.
Fox Studios is still firmly committed to doing the movie, saying that they will “regroup and move forward aggressively.” According to Wikipedia, as of January, filming on the production was due to begin this month, so it’s likely that shooting will be delayed until they can find a new director (if it hasn’t already been delayed since then, we couldn’t readily ascertain).
It’s good to hear from Aronofsky that the script is good, though. There were a many well founded complaints about the plot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Personally, I found the movie to be exactly what I was expecting: a series of fight sequences strung out on thin scenes of dialogue like shiny beads on a wire. The cameo from a couple who seemed to be Ma and Pa Kent was an added bonus. Perhaps this time around, we’ll get a superhero movie for the ages, not for Rifftrax.
(via Bleeding Cool.)
