Ready to see Hugh Jackman don the Wolverine claws again? Well, get ready because the much anticipated “Wolverine” sequel is being set for July 23, 2013 by Fox Studios.

The sequel has recently found its director in James Mangold, who puts the story in Japan this time around. 2009′s “Wolverine Origins” was directed by Gavin Hood. The sequel has seen its problems early on in the pre production stages with the production pushed back several times, but now it’s said that Fox is making this particular project a top priority for the studio.

This isn’t the first time this particular franchise has faced some drama. In 2009 a firestorm of chaos hit when the bootleg of Wolverine Origins hit the Internet, which saw the Fox Chairman step forward to protect the film’s integrity and boost sales that it inevitably lost from the leaked bootleg. “The version that went out is unfinished. It’s about 10 minutes shorter, doesn’t have key scenes, it wasn’t edited, and none of the effects shots were in any remotely final form,” Rothman said at a conference in 2009. “It’s a complete misrepresentation of the film and is deeply unfair to the people who have worked on it for years.”

In 2010 Gilberto Sanchez a 49 year-old father was nabbed as the bootlegger and sentenced to a year in federal prison. We’re betting that the studio will be extra careful about who has their hands on the sequel.

As far as the cast goes with the Wolverine sequel, the only one that’s confirmed is Hugh Jackman as the title character Wolverine. We’re sure he will be donning the retractable claws too.

The release date sets the film up against Lionsgate with Kenny Ortega’s much anticipated remake of “Dirty Dancing”, and Disney’s sure hit with “Phineas and Ferb”.

Wolverine Sequel Slated For Release is a post from: The Inquisitr

I realize that smokers are the lowest scum of the earth lately and that we get bastardized and ostracized worse than the homeless, the drug addicts and the drunks but now we are being told we’re worse than rapists and terrorists. At least that is the position that The American Medical Association Alliance is taking when it comes to the movies. Yes, that’s right our favorite people in scubs is lobbying the Motion Picture Association to apply a mandatory R-rating to any move that has smoking in it.

This is because, according to a report just out via CNN, these green suited goodie two shoes are blaming movies for being the cause of one-third to one-half of all young smokers in the United States. The prime example of the incredible social pressure being applied to our weak-willed innocent babies to get them hooked on smoking is the gratuitous smoking in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

American Medical Association Alliance President Sandi Frost used as her chief example of a movie with "gratuitous smoking" this month’s blockbuster "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which was rated PG-13 "for intense sequences of action and violence, and some partial nudity."

"Millions of children have been exposed to the main star of the film, Hugh Jackman, with a cigar in his mouth in various scenes," Frost said. "I’m willing to bet that not one child would have enjoyed that movie or Mr. Jackman’s performance any less if he hadn’t been smoking."

Of course Twentieth Century Fox, the studio responsible for the movie, have come out saying otherwise

A spokesman for Twentieth Century Fox, the studio responsible for the Wolverine movie series, said Jackman’s cigar was never lit and it was limited to just two scenes.

In one scene, the cigar is shot out of his mouth, prompting Jackman’s Wolverine character to suggest its loss would lead to clean living — an anti-smoking statement — the studio spokesman said.

He said that while the Wolverine character has a cigar in his mouth in almost every panel of the comic book series, producers made "a conscious decision" to limit the cigar in the movie.

This hasn’t stopped the doctors though in their push to have the MPAA add smoking to its list of factors used in determining the ratings given to movies. A list that runs from cursing, lewd gestures right up to rape and terrorism.

The MPAA has come out and said though that they have already been doing this to an extent for the last two years. Angela Martinez, an MPAA spokesperson, said that smoking is rated like all the other factors which includes sex and violence. This isn’t enough for the doctors though because they what it to be an absolute condition of a movie getting the R-rating not just a factor.

As a side note it took me longer to find a graphic with Wolverine smoking a cigar than it took me to write the post and it wasn’t even a great graphic at that

[hat tip to Newsarama Update: I should also give proper credit to Russ over at Newsarama for the inspiration for this post's headline - sorry about that Russ]

Smoking is worse than rape and terrorism is a post from: The Inquisitr

Almost a month before Wolverine hit the movie theaters a workprint copy of the movie was “leaked” onto the Web. It was a copy that was half finished as far as the special effects were concerned with green screens and wire framed character models visible for all the world to see. The great fight scene at the top of the nuclear reactor was more stickman like drawing that anything to do with the actors. In the end it was an incomplete movie that really only left the majority of those that watched it wanting to see the real thing.

In contrast Star Trek made it to the theater without a hitch and not a single “leak” to be found on the web. There were no FBI agents busting down doors and seizing servers or freelance reviewers losing their jobs because they reviewed something that they shouldn’t have. Everything was above board and unlike Wolverine the Star Trek movie became the darling of the weekend critics; which will last until the next great movie hits.

On one hand you have a great action movie without any pretentions of greatness getting panned and making movie executives fall all over themselves crying about how piracy was going to ruin the movie. On the other side of the coin you have a movie that made it to the theater with movie executives pleased as punch that they had kept those nasty criminal pirates from ruining yet another movie.

As we make our way through the weeks following the big weekend releases of both movies we have some serious dollar figures that obviously will show that those terrible pirate must have ruin the success of Wolverine while letting Star Trek surge ahead. There is only one problem with that assumption – it’s full of crap.

On opening weekend box office dollar figures we have  the following:

• Wolverine earned more than $85 million
• Star Trek netted $75 million

So there you have it folks. The movie that caused the most uproar over piracy in recent time actually earned more money than the other hot movie that garnered critic praise and not a peep about piracy. In the process an ISP data host lost millions of dollars and had their reputation severely impacted. As well a long time FOX freelance movie reviewer has lost his livelihood. All because of the pirating of an incomplete film that ended up earning more money on opening weekend box office that the golden boy movie.

Someone care to tell me exactly how piracy is hurting the movie industry?

Wolverine, Star Trek and how piracy destroyed them both is a post from: The Inquisitr

X-Men Origins: Wolverine took $87 million for its opening weekend (from Friday), taking it straight to the number one movie at the box office.

Wolverine had the second-best opening of the four X-Men released so far, being beaten only by X-Men:The Last Stand which took $103 million on its opening weekend. Last Stand though had a distinct advantage, opening on Memorial Day in 2003, a traditional high yield opening time for movies.

Variety reports that Wolverine’s opening take “came despite a working copy of the movie being pirated a month before the film’s opening. [Fox] isn’t sure how much the piracy ate into the box office, but some insiders suggest it could be as much as $20 million.”

So despite having the second biggest opening in the X-Men series, and the biggest for a non-memorial day release in the franchise, the industry seriously believes that the leaked copy that hit P2P networks one month ago could have cost the movie $20 million? What absolute rubbish.

Here’s a movie that doesn’t include all the X-Men stars (it’s a prequel spinoff), that wasn’t released at the best time to maximize revenue, and yet it opens better than nearly all the X-Men movies before it. Wouldn’t the opposite then be true? That is, the publicity the movie gained through the leaked copy would have increased exposure to the movie, and therefore the box office take? And let’s not forget that the leaked copy wasn’t the completed movie either, so fans would have had a real reason to see the completed version, having seen the incomplete version.

Lets looks at some stats. “Wolverine pirated” delivers a staggering 1.42 million results in Google despite only now being released. That’s 1.42million mentions of the pirated copy that wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been pirated. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers 4.9 million results despite only being released this weekend. Paul Blart: Mall Cop has 3.5 million results despite being a number one at the box office months ago. Like it or not, the pirated copy of Wolverine drove a lot of attention to the movie, and that attention helped result in…. a number one at the box office, and the second biggest take in the X-Men franchise.

The small amount lost in piracy upfront (if any amount at all, because a loss presumes that the viewer would have paid to see it to begin with), would be more than outweighed by the extra viewers delivered by the massive publicity due to the pirated copy. There is no possible counter argument to not valuing the publicity in this case, and that the movie industry attempts to ignore it simply shows how disengenous their arguments are.

Wolverine tops box office not despite of, but because of the leaked copy is a post from: The Inquisitr

As usual of course the beating of chests and proclamations of how bad this is being echoed through mainstream press online and offline media. Which is really funny when you consider the fact that the biggest downloads of movies on the web have also been some of the biggest box office winners.

Here’s the thing though. Fox had a perfect opportunity with this happening to almost totally turn around peoples perception of the movie industry. As Michael Masnick at Techdirt said

But, even so, instead of going all legal and threatening, the studio could have responded in a way that built anticipation to get people to actually go see the movie.

Why not be straightforward about it, saying, something along the lines of:

Hey Wolverine fans! We know that you’re all looking forward to the release of the movie next month. We’re excited too! By now you may have heard that an early totally unfinished version has been leaked online. It’s missing a whole bunch of stuff — including some amazing special effects — and honestly, this version isn’t a finished product at all. We think you’ll get a much better overall experience by waiting for the full finished product, but we certainly understand that some of you just can’t wait (trust us, we feel the same way!). If that’s the case, please, feel free to check it out, but please remember that this isn’t even close to the final version. If anything, think of this as a "behind-the-scenes" peek of just what a movie looks like before all the real "movie magic" gets put in there. If you do check it out, we hope you’ll join us May 1st to check out the finalized version as well on the big screen the way we intended for you to see this awesome movie. It’s just a month away!

Yet another missed opportunity.

And by the way the movie is great but the workprint copy floating around out there is very incomplete and has a lot of cleaning up to do with the special effects. Which raises an interesting thought – this release I think could actually encourage people to go see a great action movie if only two see how much it differs from the workprint release.

[photo courtesy of My Hollywood Dream]

20th Century Fox misses perfect chance with Wolverine workprint is a post from: The Inquisitr

I have been a comic book fan for as long as I can remember and one of my most favorite characters has always been Wolverine. While I thought much of what we have seen in the previous X-Men outings was pretty well .. okay … I always hoped for better. With the upcoming release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine it looks like I might get m wish of some real Wolverine action and attitude.

So when I saw this brand new TV spot that just got released to the web (thanks to FirstShowing.net) I just had to share it with any other Wolverine fans that might be lurking out there.

Enjoy.

New Wolverine television spot hot off the presses is a post from: The Inquisitr