Darren Aronofsky off Wolverine

The latest news regarding the sequel to 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn’t necessarily good, as Collider reports that Darren Aronofsky has stepped down as director for personal reasons.

I’ll be among the first to bash someone for using personal reasons and family life as an excuse to cover up more business-related problems such as not getting along with the production team, getting an over-inflated ego after doing Black Swan, or bailing out because the project just sucks, but Aronofsky has been in the spotlight enough to add some weight to his reasons.

He and actress Rachel Weisz recently divorced and that has serious potential to lead to a Hollywood-size custody battle, and taking off to spend a year out of the country isn’t the best way to show what a great dad you are. His original estimate of being out of the country for almost a year might also be a little off because of the catastrophe in Japan, since a large portion of the film was going to be shot on-location there. There’s no word yet on exactly how much that will affect production.

20th Century Fox is taking things in stride, saying in a press release,

While we are of course disappointed that Darren can’t do ‘The Wolverine’, we also understand and respect his reasons. Having done both ‘The Wrestler’ and ‘Black Swan’ with Darren, we know he is an extraordinary talent and we look forward to working with him on other projects in the future. Hugh Jackman and Fox both remain fully committed to making ‘The Wolverine’. We will regroup and move forward aggressively.

No new names for helming the Wolverine project have been mentioned yet, but it should be interesting to see who the studios start courting. They’ll want to keep the momentum going before the movie loses steam and winds up as just another good idea sitting on a shelf somewhere.