HUGH JACKMAN

TWO AND HALF DECADES AFTER THE THEN-UNKNOWN AUSSIE ACTOR SLASHED ONTO THE HOLLYWOOD SCENE AS WOLVERINE IN 2000’S X-MEN, THE EMMY WINNER IS DONNING HIS CLAWS ONCE AGAIN ALONGSIDE RYAN REYNOLDS IN THIS SUMMER’S SUPER-HIT DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

BY WILL HARRIS

He said it would never happen again. Then he said, again, that it would never happen again. And yet here we are, in the summer of 2024, anxiously awaiting an event that we’ve been assured repeatedly would never unfold on the big screen again: Hugh Jackman is playing Wolverine once more.

Behold the power of Ryan Reynolds…or, more specifically, behold the power of Deadpool! Before we delve into the friendship between Jackman and Reynolds, let’s step even farther back in time, to the late 1990s, when Jackman first found himself cast as Wolverine.

Arguably the most famous Marvel Comics character this side of Spider-Man, it was a role for which many notable names were under consideration, with the list ranging from Glenn Danzig to Russell Crowe to Viggo Mortensen, but it was actually Dougray Scott who was initially cast in the part. Alas, due to a combination of scheduling conflicts and injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident, Scott had to step away from the role, which led to Jackman who had been recommended by Crowe earlier in the casting process – securing the role for X-Men, released in 2000.

Jackman would go on to play Wolverine in the first three X-Men films the other two being 2003’s X2 and 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand before finally getting a chance to step outside of the collective of merry mutants and secure the solo spotlight for 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine…which, as it happens, is where he first met Reynolds.

At the time, Reynolds was still finding his place in Hollywood. This isn’t to say that he hadn’t found fame: by this point, he’d already headlined films like 2002’s Van Wilder, 2005’s The Amityville Horror, Waiting…, and Just Friends, 2007’s The Nines, and 2008’s Definitely, Maybe. As you can see by that disparate list of films, however, the most popular of which could at best be described as moderately successful, Hollywood hadn’t cracked the code for where Reynolds’ skills as a thespian worked best, and he definitely didn’t yet qualify as an A-list actor.

As such, it’s no surprise that, upon arriving on the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine to play Deadpool for the first time, Reynolds was stunned at the size of the production and feeling a little bit overwhelmed and out of his element. But he was arguably even more stunned by the instant warmth of the reception he received from Jackman upon their first on-set encounter.

“I was nervous as hell,” Reynolds recalled to Jackman during a joint interview for People earlier this year. “I was walking through the trailers, jet lagged, disoriented, feeling really green and kind of out of my depth, and there was no script to look at. It was just like, what’s going to happen? And I heard my name, ‘Ryan!’ in between these trailers as I was walking. And it was you. Just the fact that you knew my name meant so much to me. And you came over, you gave me a big hug, and you said, ‘Welcome aboard.’”

With that, the Jackman/Reynolds friendship was forged, and while Jackman would appear in Deadpool 2 via archival footage, the twosome wouldn’t work together again as Deadpool and Wolverine until… well, now.

In the interim between these two encounters, Jackman had continued to play Wolverine, first in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, then in another solo endeavor (2013’s The Wolverine), followed by two further X-films (2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past and 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse). Finally, in 2017, Jackman returned to the character for what he viewed as the final time: Logan, a critically acclaimed flick that seemed to provide the best of all possible farewells.

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Mandatory Credit: Photo by Ntavernise/20thcentury Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (9308130c)
Hugh Jackman
“The Greatest Showman” Film – 2017

That’s not to say that Jackman hadn’t at least contem plated the thought of reviving everyone’s favorite adamantium-laced mutant scrapper, mind you, particularly with the arrival of the proper Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it had reached a point where he’d decided to call it a day on the role.

“For many, many years, I often thought how cool would it be to have Wolverine in a scene with Iron Man, or Hulk, particularly Hulk, and all of that,” Jackman told Rotten Tomatoes in 2018. “I totally get that. It frustrated me that that was not… And I, for many years, thought that was an impossibility. But, mate, I think the ship has sailed. You know, when you get into a party, you leave the party, all is good. You’re in the cab. You’re just about to get home, and someone goes, ‘You’ve got to come back, dude. Such-and-such has turned up,’ and you go, ‘You know what? I’m going to bed.’”

And that, it seemed, was that for Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine…until he got a call from Reynolds.

After several years of wanting to do a Deadpool 3 but failing to find an idea that Marvel would accept, Reynolds pitched the idea of a Deadpool and Wolverine team-up movie to Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, in 2018, and…Feige said “no,” believe it or not.

“At the time, Kevin said, ‘Forget it. It’s never going to happen,’” Reynolds recalled during promotion for the film in Shanghai earlier this year. “And I said, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ As we marched inexorably forward, Shawn [Levy, director of Deadpool & Wolverine] and I were coming up with different pitches and different ideas, and we pitched Marvel everything you could imagine little movies, big movies, anything – and it wasn’t working out. And then one day, we were on our last pitch. We were about to say to Kevin Feige, ‘I think we’re going to walk away and we’ll come back later, maybe in a couple years, when we have a better sense of things.’ And Hugh happened to call me.”

“I was on my way, I was just driving, and literally, just like a bolt of lightning, came this knowing deep in my gut that I wanted to do this film with Ryan,” Jackman told Fandango. “For Deadpool and Wolverine to come back together. I swear to you, When I said I was done, I really thought I was done. But in the back of my head, ever since I saw Deadpool, I was like, ‘Those two characters together.’ I knew it, I knew the fans wanted it ever since I put on the claws, people talked about these two. So, that had always been there, but I just knew. I rang Ryan. And I just said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Like, I hadn’t rung my agent, no one. I had to ring my agent and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I have just committed to a movie.’”

Given the amount of advance buzz that’s been going on for this film since its initial announcement, it seems almost a sure thing that Deadpool & Wolverine will be the box office champion of this summer.

Even more certain: this really will be the last time we see Jackman playing Wolverine..

Then again, he’s said that before…