With shooting about to begin on the second solo outing for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (simply entitled THE WOLVERINE, they seem to be done with the whole X-MEN ORIGINS prefix now) news has started to kick in proper as to what we can expect.

First up is the casting of Lord Shingen, the Yakuza boss Wolverine ruffles a few feathers with when he’s schnikt-ing his way across Japan. One particular feather is the fact our hairy hero bums his daughter. Shingen will be portrayed by Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen holding up the plot of LOST’s final season as The Temple’s Head Other, Dogen), while model-turned-actress Tao Okamoto will take the role of Wolvy’s love interest, Mariko, who is being forced into an arranged marriage with a corrupt minister of justice named Noburo Mori (Brian Tee, last seen in TV’s GRIMM). 

Another character confirmed for the film is the previously rumoured Silver Samurai, who will be played by Will Yun Lee. The actor appeared in another Marvel movie a few years back, though we doubt many of you got the chance to see him due to that flick being the box office bomb ELEKTRA (but let’s be honest, as underwhelming as that film was, it’s still head and shoulders above X-MEN 3 or X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE). The character is also a mutant, and is the illegitimate son of Shingen himself. Interestingly, BIG HERO 6, the animated Marvel feature film in early development over at Disney (read more about that here if you missed it), also has him as a principal character.

So there you go. Probably not the most exciting casting news we’ve ran considering we’re not that familiar with half of ’em, but still, we’re all holding out for the movie to make up for the catastrophe that was the last.

THE WOLVERINE is directed by James Mangold and will be with us July 26th 2013.

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