Hugh Jackman may have hung up his adamantium claws as Wolverine, but that doesn’t mean the character’s legacy is over. Logan director James Mangold tells The Hollywood Reporter that a script for a spin-off focusing on Laura, Wolverine’s sorta-kinda-daughter (aka ‘X-23’), is in the works.
Mangold notes director Patty Jenkin’s success with Wonder Woman as inspiration for a female-led superhero movie set in Marvel’s X-Men universe.
“Patty’s success with that film only solidifies more for studios that there’s less to fear with a female protagonist,” says Mangold. “The more that keeps getting hit home, that ends up giving me more space turning around and going, ‘Well, here we are with a female protagonist. That’s incredible. And what are we going to do with her?’ And that’s where we are with that [the Laura script] right now, dreaming.”
While Logan was a dour, Western-tinged film that was a bleak departure from standard superhero fare, an X-23 film could be something different, says Mangold.
“[The spinoff] may not be in the same exact tonality or with the same genre orientations as Logan, but I think part of what has been opened up in this universe to all of us now is, drawing on different genre traditions, there are new pathways to be opened for new characters that populate this universe.”
One person who definitely won’t be returning is Hugh Jackman, who has definitively retired from the role of Wolverine. But that doesn’t mean Wolverine won’t return with a different actor in the part.
“I hope it will be recast,” says Jackman about the claws-popping mutant he made famous.
Who do you think should play Wolverine in the X-23 movie? Or in the rest of the X-Men movie universe, for that matter? We want to hear from you — let us know in the comments below!
