James Mangold’s ‘The Wolverine’ To Be Set AFTER The Original X-Men Films

While the film was originally believed to be a prequel, director James Mangold has confirmed that his upcoming film The Wolverine will take place after all of the previous X-Men films. Yes, that even includes The Last Stand sadly. In The Last Stand we saw Logan forced to kill Jean Grey. Professor Xavier and Scott Summers (Please Fox…fix this one!) are believed to be deceased, and the team has parted ways. Could the recent rumor of Jean Grey appearing in the film turn out to be true? Could they be fixing the things about The Last Stand that pissed everyone off so much? Mangold stated:

“Where this film sits in the universe of the films is after them all. Jean Grey is gone, most of the X-Men are disbanded or gone, so there’s a tremendous sense of isolation for him.”

“That’s something that for me was very important, that I land in a very specific place in his timeline. I wanted to be able to tell the story without the burden of handing it off to a film that already exists and having to conform to it. The ideas of immortality reign very heavily in this story and the burden of immortality weighs heavily on Logan. For me that’s such an interesting part of Logan’s character that is nearly impossible to explore if you have a kind of league or team movie.”

We will have to wait and see what they’re up to. For now though, check out the newest still from the recent issue of Empire Magazine!

The Wolverine slices into theaters July 26th, 2013.

Source: Empire