Hugh Jackman "Pumped" About The Wolverine
Posted 02.01.11 by Ryan
Hugh Jackman's fifth on-screen appearance as the Marvel Comics character Wolverine will commence in Fox's upcoming sequel stand alone, non-sequel movie The Wolverine. Based on the on the 1982 comic book mini-series by writer Chris Claremont and artist Frank Miller, Jackman has been talking about adapting the series since 2009, just months after X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened. Now with production starting in a couple months, Jackman told The L.A. Times that he's "pumped" to play the famous mutant once again.
I’m really, really pumped about it. I feel like all the planets are finally aligned to make a great movie. We finally have the character and with this mythology — ever since X-Men, when I was kind of hanging around and reading all these comics, because I was cast before I ever read any X-Men comics, so I was trying to get my hands on everything. I remember saying to [producer] Lauren Shuler Donner, "Lauren, I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen this Japanese story, and I think it’s so good. It’s just genius, it’s brilliant.” And we kind of always talked about it from there on. I sort of even wanted to do that in the third X-Men movie at first, but we thought, no, we really need to establish who he is at first, and we did that [with ], and now this is sort of the cherry on top, to finally do it and have Darren Aronofsky direct it. I love his gung-ho attitude toward it and great vision. Straight off, it’s not a sequel, it’s a stand-alone, and I think we’re going to make one that people will describe as the best of the bunch.
Jackman also praised the script, adapted by screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, describing it as "phenomenal".
I read a story once that said that [McQuarrie] wrote The Usual Suspects in 15 days, and with this one he said to me, "I just knew what I wanted, and it came out real easy." And he’s done an unbelievable job with it, and with Darren it’s just really exciting. I’m as excited as anybody to see what we come up with. I know we’re going to be met with huge expectations. The expectations will be high, but he’s one of the great filmmakers out there. I worked with him before [on The Fountain ], and I knew as soon as I met him that he should be doing movies like this. He’s been looking a long time, and I’ve asked him to do other ones, and this time it worked out. I’m beyond thrilled.
What Jackman is not "thrilled" about is his training and diet routine to get into shape for the role, which Jackman has said involves adding a pound of muscle a week by exercising and eating 6,000 calories a day. Jackman says the training is necessary since Aronofsky wants the actor to achieve a more classic look for the character.
I don’t know how much I want to give away about it, but Darren said with the last one, "Hey you looked great, but you’re so tall that in those long shots you looked kind of like Clint Eastwood, and that’s not Wolverine." He said that Wolverine, in the comics, is powerful, stocky, you know, he’s short and thick. So he said, "I want you to go there, get bigger."
The Wolverine will start shooting this April in New York City before moving over to Japan.