Kevin Feige bans Hugh Jackman from playing Wolverine in Deadpool 3

Deadpool and Wolverine is set to become one of the biggest films of the year thanks to the duo of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, who returns to his iconic X-Men role for the first time in seven years. Jackman’s return is generating significant buzz around the comic book movie, something much needed for Marvel Studios after a difficult 2023 that saw films like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels” fail at the box office. It may come as a surprise, but Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios He assured the empire He originally warned Jackman not to play Wolverine again.

“I said, ‘Let me give you some advice, Hugh.’ “Don’t come back,” Feige said. “‘You had the greatest ending in history with ‘Logan.’ That’s not something we should back away from.”

What ultimately prompted Feige to accept the idea of ​​Jackman returning was that he would not be playing the version of Logan/Wolverine that audiences loved in the various X-Men films. This was also of interest to Jackman himself. His original iteration of Wolverine died in Logan, and he didn’t want to mess with that movie either.

“It’s all because of this device that exists in the Marvel universe to move across timelines,” Jackman previously said. SiriusXM About return. “Now we can go back because, you know, science. So, I don’t have to mess with the ‘Logan’ timeline, which was important to me. And maybe I’ll think about that for the fans, too.”

Jackman added in a new interview with: empire That “Deadpool and Wolverine” will show “different sides of Wolverine that we haven’t seen before in the movies.”

Not only did Feige initially warn Jackman against returning as Wolverine, but… He also said empire He turned down Ryan Reynolds’ original offer for a third “Deadpool” movie as the two were figuring out the best way to introduce the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe following Disney’s acquisition of Fox.

Reynolds revealed that he first conceived of “Deadpool 3” as a “Rashomon” story about Wolverine and Deadpool and something they fall into together, but told from three very different points of view. It was a way to make a large-scale film in a very small way.

Feige declined the offer, though he added: “The truth is, I wasn’t sure how I was going to incorporate Deadpool yet. I was thinking a lot about how I was going to bring mutants and the X-Men in there [the MCU], and I thought it should be more than just playing hit songs. But the truth is, Ryan is an idea machine. He may have offered me that, but he also offered 25 other thoughts and ideas.

“Reynolds went back to the drawing board, and I wrote about 18 different treatments. Some of them are almost like a Sundance movie, with a budget of less than $10 million, kind of using the IP in a way they hadn’t used it before, and I pitched bigger films and showed things in between.”

Whatever Reynolds and Feige agreed on, audiences will finally get to check it out when Deadpool and Wolverine hits theaters on July 26 from Disney.