LOS ANGELES -- Don't look for Gerard Butler to Escape from New York.
Although in the wake of 300's seismic success he'd been tapped to don Snake Plissken's eye patch in a remake of John Carpenter's 1981 thriller, Butler confirms he's no longer involved.
"It just didn't feel like the right way for me to be going," he tells Sun Media.
He also denies he'll be seen opposite Hugh Jackman in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a spinoff of the highly lucrative X-Men franchise. Internet buzz had pegged Butler as a contender to play the feral, fanged villain Sabretooth. "I talked to them (the producers) awhile ago, but the last conversation we had, I think I said I was working anyway (while they'd be filming)."
Not that Butler is hurting for work. For the past seven weeks he's been in New Mexico shooting an untitled science-fiction thriller formerly known as Game. The Running Man-esque project casts him as the top-ranked warrior in a world-wide interactive game that enslaves its avatars.
Before it's released next year, audiences will likely see Butler in Rockarolla, a Guy Ritchie-directed crime comedy about -- what else? -- London's underworld.
"It's Guy back to being Guy," Butler says, without naming Ritchie's disasterous Madonna vehicle Swept Away by name. "It's just a delicious role."
And he's also shot the children's fantasy adventure Nim's Island opposite Jodie Foster.
After that? "The next couple of films I've considering are comedies."
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