Director James Mangold has confirmed that "The Wolverine" is not a prequel to the earlier editions of the "X-Men" franchise, but will follow the events of the third movie, Brett Ratner's "X-Men: The Last Stand".
It was previously believed to be a prequel to the X-Men franchise.
Mangold revealed the information in an interview with Empire, Thursday.
"Where this film sits in the universe of the films is after them all, Jean Grey is gone, most of the X-Men are disbanded or gone, so there's a tremendous sense of isolation for him."
Major parts of the movie take place in Japan, where Wolverine becomes involved in gang wars.
"That's something that for me was very important, that I land in a very specific place in his timeline," Mangold continued. "I wanted to be able to tell the story without the burden of handing it off to a film that already exists and having to conform to it. The ideas of immortality reign very heavily in this story and the burden of immortality weighs heavily on Logan. For me that's such an interesting part of Logan's character that is nearly impossible to explore if you have a kind of league or team movie."
The director says that this movie is a "Japanese noir picture with tentpole action in it", unlike the earlier X-Men movies that were termed as "comic book action adventure."
Hugh Jackman will star in the movie as Wolverine.
The movie is based on Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's 1982 limited series.
It will be produced by Hugh Jackman, Lauren Shuler Donner, Hutch Parker and John Palermo. The script was originally written by Christopher McQuarrie, and later, Mark Bomback was asked to take over.
"The Wolverine" is scheduled to be released on July 26, 2013.
