The Wolverine Sequel Now Has a Writer

James Mangold's 2017 sequel to last year's The Wolverine has enlisted the aid of a writer to But indeed, as Deadline reports, David James Kelly has been tapped by Fox to write the film that will fill their recently announced March 3rd, 2017 release date. Since there are two of them listed at the Internet Movie Database, it's perhaps worth noting that the David James Kelly in question is the one who edited an episode of Sucks Less With Kevin Smith, not the one primed to direct an episode of the upcoming Daredevil reboot on Netflix. He's more recently worked on short films like Stay Still and The Recruit, but probably the only title most people may have heard of is Sunshine Cleaning, on which he worked in editing. The offbeat 2008 comedy from the filmmakers behind Little Miss Sunshine starred Man of Steel's Amy Adams. With production set to begin after the conclusion of X-Men: Apocalypse, it seems likely that Hugh Jackman will return to reprise his role as Wolverine -- it is, after all, hard to imagine them writing and casting a new film with such a short turnaround, given the pressures that will be on the filmmakers to follow up Jackman's fan-favorite performance. That's hard from assured, though, as Jackman has been cagey about how many more installments he might be convinced to do.