While announcing that they are switching a few movies around, Fox released the official synopsis for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Here is it:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is set to star Jackman and will be directed by Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Rendition). The producers are Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter (who produced all three previous “X-Men” films), along with Jackman and his Seed Prods. producing partner, John Palermo. The film will be executive produced by Marvel Films’ Kevin Feige.

Leading up to the events of X-Men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine – written by David Benioff (The Kite Runner, Troy) – tells the story of Wolverine’s epically violent and romantic past, his complex relationship with Victor Creed, and the ominous Weapon X program. Along the way, Wolverine encounters many mutants, both familiar and new, including surprise appearances by several legends of the X-Men universe.

Sounds interesting. I wonder who the ‘familiar’ mutants will be, and the ‘legends of the X-Men universe’. I’m getting more and more excited, and I hated Wolverine in the X-Men movies. The screen time whore!

In related news, screenwriter David Benioff spoke to ComingSoon about Wolverine. Benioff wrote the first draft and then more writers were brought on board.

CS: I’ve read a couple pages of the “Wolverine” script which has to be about a year old. Have you stayed involved with that up until they started shooting?
Benioff: I haven’t been working on “Wolverine” since… I mean, it’s been a while since the last draft, but they brought on other writers starting in like September or something, so I haven’t seen whatever the shooting draft is, so I don’t know exactly what it is. I think they’re supposed to start shooting in January in Australia, but I have not been really in the loop on that one anymore.

CS: I’m a comic book fan myself, so did you spend a lot of time reading comics and trying to distill his origin, which is not exactly the easiest one to adapt. You got “Kite Runner” down to two hours but Wolverine has had so many origins over the years. There’s a lot of them out there.
Benioff: Yeah, it will be interesting, because I know that changes have been made, so I don’t know how they’re handling… I don’t know what’s exactly in the present draft of the script, so I’m curious to see it when it gets made, but yes, I grew up a huge comic book fan. Where I grew up on Yorkville and 86th on the East End, there was a comic store called Action Comics on like 84th and 2nd, and I was there every week. Wolverine was always my favorite character, because at that time at least, most of the superheroes were still these square-jawed righteous do-gooders, and then along comes this cigar-chomping, hard-drinking rowdy little Canadian guy and I just loved him from the beginning. It was the one comic book adaptation that I always wanted to do, and I really went after it. I went into Marvel and just really pursued it aggressively.