“They were desperate”: Hugh Jackman and Marvel’s meeting for Wolverine is a pure movie story

It is June 15, 1999, the American media Variety announces that Dougray Scott will play Wolverine, then described as “the lead role” in Bryan Singer’s upcoming X-Men film based on Marvel comics. His fierce personality in Twin Town convinced the Fox president, who will release the superhero film in theaters.

Two roles, but which one to choose?

Except that at the time that filming on X-Men began, Scott was playing the main villain in Mission: Impossible 2. Tom Cruise had personally chosen him for the role, and had no intention of letting him go until he had finished his scenes. Scott had told him that he would shoot both films – M:I2 AND X-Men, but remember that “For some reason, [Tom Cruise] said I couldn’t. He was a very powerful guy, and everyone was doing their best to go along with him.” Scott therefore cancels his participation in Bryan Singer’s film.

Panic among the X-Men

For its part, Fox has already started filming X-Men and finds itself with the Wolverine actor absent, retained by Tom Cruise. On the set of the superhero film, while Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are filming their scenes as Charles Xavier and Magneto, auditions are starting to be held again to play Logan.

This iconic Wolverine scene will be revisited in Deadpool 3

Twentieth Century Fox

Hugh Jackman’s takes place in Bryan Singer’s dressing room accompanied by screenwriter Tom DeSanto. At the microphone ofEWthe actor says today:

[DeSanto] kept asking, ‘Quiet… quieter… quieter.’ By the end, I couldn’t even hear myself. I could tell he was thinking, ‘Why on my lunch break do I have to listen to a guy for a role that’s already been cast?’ He was pissed.

Twentieth Century Fox

But Jackman doesn’t realize that at this point, the team is in complete trouble: “There was an urgency to find our Wolverine”remembers Kevin Feige, at the time just a “production associate” and not yet the top dog at Marvel Studios. “Lauren [Schuler Donner, productrice de X-Men]was very enthusiastic about this Australian who had initially been rejected. From memory, one of the reasons was that he was too tall. In the comics, Wolverine is sometimes called ‘Little Fire Hydrant’. He’s a small guy. But they were desperate.”

A dinner to convince them all

Jackman, for his part, leaves Singer’s dressing room at the end of his tether, convinced that he will never get the role. However, Kevin Feige offers him, before going to Toronto airport, to eat with him and precisely the famous DeSanto. The actor has no hope and replies: “Kevin, we all know I’m not getting the part. We don’t have to have dinner.”. But Feige insists, has dinner with his two guests, and drives Jackman to the airport, who tells himself that he will never see the producer again.

Veeren -Christophe Clovis / Bestimage

Yet he would be remembered and would lend his features to Wolverine in ten feature films, sometimes just for a simple vocal cameo, sometimes on spin-offs entirely dedicated to the character. Today, 24 years after he first donned the claws, Jackman returns as Logan for the highly anticipated Deadpool & Wolverine, which hits theaters in just 21 days.