By Steve Sedlak

I don’t know how you guys feel about Hugh Jackman after the Oscars this year, but it takes one hell of a man to put on an opening musical act. Especially a one man opening musical act.So who better to take on the role of leading man in the upcoming “X-men Origins: Wolverine” movie? Of course Jackman has a long history with the X-men franchise, but this is a movie devoted to his character, so naturally the focus has shifted a little.

So Hugh Jackman being Wolverine is really no suprise. But the director of the film is. Director Gavin Hood also directed the Oscar award winning film “Tsotsi” some four years earlier. While the South African director has remained fairly low on the cinematic radar since his success with “Tsotsi,” he also directed a middle-of-the-road Hollywood drama, “Rendition,” in 2007. Hopefully this film, a big-budget, glossy Hollywood production, will launch the young director into the cinematic limelight.

The cast of the film will also include Ryan Reynolds – also in “Adventureland,” reviewed in this week’s issue – Liev Schreiber and Danny Huston, just to name a few of the film’s biggest names.

The film is set to run like a fictional biopic of Wolverine’s/Logan’s backstory before he participates in the Weapon X program. In other words, it’s a prequel to the X-men films of the early 2000s. Comic book fans familiar with the “Origin” series released between 2001 and 2002 should already know most of the content of the film which sheds light onto the mysterious past of Logan’s character – something obscured over the course of some 30 or so years of X-men publication history and since Wolverine’s first appearance.

While there have been rumors of the film having been leaked from a print held by a special effects company contracted to work on the film in late March, nothing can compare to seeing these type of films on the big screen. Oh, by the way, none of those special effects were on Hugh Jackman. He is actually just that ripped.

Opens May 1!