Once Joss Whedon took the Wonder Woman directorial gig Matthew Vaughn moved up the list of likely candidates for the third X-Men film (see 'Buffy Scribe Tapped for Wonder Woman'), and it became official today when Variety confirmed that the rumor was true.

 

This will be Vaughn's second film as director; his first was Layer Cake, a British gangster film that will be released in the U.S. this spring.  Vaughn has a more extensive list of films on which he has production credits, including A Short Film about John Bolton (Neil Gaiman, director); and Swept Away, Snatch,and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, director).

 

Zak Pen is writing the film (see 'Zak Penn Writing X-Men 3'), which is scheduled to start shooting this summer and premiere the first weekend of May, 2006.