THE WOLVERINE Gets a Release Date

The Wolverine

, James Mangold's troubled and much-anticipated follow up to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, seems to have moved one step closer to becoming a reality with the announcement yesterday that the film will have a release date.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Hugh Jackman vehicle will hit theaters on July 23, 2013. The article notes that the July 23 release date puts the film in direct competition with a remake of Dirty Dancing as well as a theatrical feature based on the popular Disney cartoon Phineas and Ferb. A little quick calculation by Bleeding Cool revealed that those films are actually slated to open on July 26th, while the 23rd is a Tuesday and unlikely to be the correct date. The film, which has yet to begin shooting, will reportedly revolve heavily around Wolverine's time in Japan, as related in the comics by Frank Miller, which takes place somewhere between the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the beginning of the first X-Men film. Given the pains Fox took in X-Men: First Class to ensure that the continuity matched up as well as they could, one assumes that The Wolverine counts as the sixth film in that franchise, marking the longest any major superhero film franchise has gone on without a continuity reboot, a record previously held by the Superman films. 2013's The Man of Steel will follow the example of Batman Begins and The Amazing Spider-Man and eschew the existing continuity in favor of a clean slate. The Wolverine has gone through a number of changes since it was announced following the surprising box office success of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was widely expected to take a hit after a leaked workprint of the film was widely circulated on the Internet in the months leading up to its release. Writers and directors have come and gone, with only the studio and Jackman continuing to insist all along that the film would be made. It now enters a crowded 2013 field of comic book movies which currently includes The Man of Steel, Thor 2, Iron Man 3, Green Lantern 2 and a numer of other, less-certain projects, according to an informal list assembled at the Internet Movie Database.