Movies

James Mangold Says 'The Wolverine' Sequel Will Follow 'X-Men: Age Of Apocalypse'

Wolverine sequel
By Russ Fischer

The Wolverine director James Mangold has a couple of non-Wolverine projects in the file (such as The Deep Blue Good-By and Three Little Words) but we know that he has been developing a sequel to The Wolverine since that film opened last year. Now Mangold has revealed that he plans to shoot the next Wolverine sequel after Bryan Singer's next X-Men movie is done.

Now does this mean that Mangold is shooting the film after Fox gets Age of Apocalypse into production, or after that film is released? X-Men: Apocalypse is set to hit theaters on May 27, 2016, so the Wolverine movie might not land until 2017.

We don't know what the Wolverine sequel story will involve, or whether it will be specifically tied to events of the X-Men films. The lack of a "present-day" X-Men movie since X3 gave Mangold the liberty to have The Wolverine act as a sequel to that film without having to be too tied to the X-Men series. But with Singer pushing the X-Men timeline forward in the two upcoming franchise entries, there will likely be more world events for a new Wolverine film to react to.

Then again, we don't know how the X-Men series timeline will stand after the events of Days of Future Past. The movie introduces Wolverine to the First Class reboot cast, but the end of this year's story could determine whether the original X-Men cast, including Jackman's Wolverine actually "exist" in the timeline going forward. We know Age of Apocalypse is an '80s-set film, which means it takes place before Wolverine joined Professor X in the first X-Men movie. But since there's a lot of timeline tweaking going on, it seems foolish to rely on any one idea as a given until after we're able to see Days of Future Past.

Jackman seems like he's still game to play Wolverine in at least another movie or two, so it doesn't seem like there's any chance of a re-cast for the character yet,

 

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