James Mangold

20th Century Fox became concerned that Michael Gracey was “overwhelmed with the scope of the picture.”

We’ve been wondering what the director of Logan would pick for his next project, and although last week it seemed like James Mangold would follow up his gritty superhero flick with a more kid-friendly endeavor, a new report says otherwise. Mangold is set to direct an untitled drama about Patty Hearst, with Elle Fanning in talks to portray the notorious heiress-turned-left wing terrorist.

The celebrated director of the last two Wolverine movies will next adapt a popular children’s book about a boy and his imaginary friend.

Every once in a while, a female-driven film is so successful that it wakes studios up a little more to the reality that women actually watch movies. Bridesmaids paved the way for more raunchy female comedies; The Hunger Games and Twilight gave us a slew of YA copycats (and the subsequently more interesting careers of Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart); and now Wonder Woman is inspiring studios to place more emphasis on their female superheroes. One of those heroes could be X-23, aka Laura, Hugh Jackman’s young mutant sidekick in Logan.

Even though it was the last in a kind of series, Logan introduced quite a few new characters into the X-Men universe, while simultaneously saying goodbye to some familiar ones. Of these new characters, some of them left the story barely after we’d gotten to know them, including Stephen merchant’s creepy, melancholy mutant Caliban.

After Logan’s smashing success, Sony has put director James Mangold at the helm of their remake of Disorder, a French thriller that starred Matthias Schoenaerts as a PTSD-afflicted ex-solder hired to protect the family of a wealthy businessman while he’s out of town.

If you’ve read any of the more mature X-Men comic books, then you know Wolverine’s go-to move is to stab people in the head. Oh, sure, he’ll slash some throats and cut off some limbs  —  he’s the best at what he does, after all, even if what he doesn’t isn’t very nice  —  but when push comes to shove, there’s no replacing a trio of claws to the noggin. That’s what made the violence in James Mangold’s R-rated Logan such a fun experience for fans. Here was the merciless killer they all loved, even if he is still nursing that secret heart of gold.

Logan stands out from other superhero movies because of its violence, definitely, but also because of its very elegantly understated melancholy. It’s barely a superhero movie at times, instead relying on emotion and character to drive a lot of its scenes, instead of a lot of CGI-laden action sequences. But, if you can believe it, director James Mangold actually had an opening prologue that would’ve made the movie even sadder.

Since Logan would be his last run as Wolverine, there was a ton of stuff Hugh Jackman wanted to put in the movie that never made it into the script. One of these things was the return, of sorts, of his brother and sometime nemesis Sabretooth, which Jackman and James Mangold toyed with but ultimately had to cut from the script.

One of the most impressive parts about Logan was one of its most closely guarded secrets: Hugh Jackman not only played the title character, he played his evil double too; a perfect clone of Wolverine known as X-24. This new character wasn’t featured in any of the marketing materials or even alluded to in any way. When he shows up late in the film he is a shock, and an effective extension of the movie’s themes about a man wrestling with his nature as a killer (and, possibly, a monster).