Although Darren Aronofsky recently saw his ambitions to helm the next Superman splatter and dissolve like a bead of slow-motion sweat, he remains among the studios’ top choices of directors who could bring their auteur sensibilities to a big-budget comic-book movie. The most recent rumors had Aronofsky being considered for the long-gestating adaptation of Preacher, but today it seems Fox has a more concrete, less exciting plan: Aronofsky is reportedly being offered the sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a rumor which we first passed along last week then snidely dismissed, unable to fathom the idea of Aronofsky’s IMDB page going from The Wrestler to Black Swan to a sequel to a rather unremarkable spin-off. Yet Vulture reports that Aronofsky may be seeking solace over the loss of Superman by going home with the first comic-book film he can find—even if it’s not all that attractive or interesting—just to, you know, feel something.
Of course, Aronofsky can also take some comfort in knowing that he may have lost Superman because he’s too much of a perfectionist: Vulture also reports that Zack Snyder was chosen precisely because David Goyer’s Superman script is “a bit of a mess,” and the fact that Warner Bros. had to get something in production by 2011 or risk losing the franchise meant that they needed someone who could jump right in, and maybe go ahead and start filming egregiously long fight sequences while his second unit worked out the “story.” Basically, Snyder was chosen because, unlike Aronofsky, he works fast and won’t spend too much time trying to “get it right” (which is certainly a ringing endorsement for the next Superman). If Aronofsky could bring that same sort of attention to detail to Wolverine 2, who knows how passable it could be? Anyway, given this recent trend, we fully expect the inevitable Captain America sequel to go to Mike Leigh.