The upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past will be the sixth outing for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and many are wondering just how much longer he can play the character, including Jackman himself. Fox recently revealed the release dates for a huge slate of future Marvel movies, including a third Wolverine movie, scheduled for 2017 and directed once again by James Mangold, who directed The Wolverine. However, in talking to SFX Magazine, Jackman hasn’t even fully committed to that movie: “I don’t know yet. We’re talking it through. I still am very ambitious for the character. And tonally I feel like we corrected the ship with the last one. But I feel we can still go further, in a way. If I did another one I’m 99.9% sure it would be the last, so that will inform what it is for me.”
This, of course, could all be a negotiation tactic to make sure he gets a nice payday from Fox; it’s not the first time an actor has made noise in the press about being ready to quit a role in order to make sure he gets paid what he wants. I should also note that while he says that Wolverine 3 would almost certainly be his last outing as Logan, there is another X-Men film, X-Men: Apocalypse scheduled to come out the year before. While Apocalypse is set in the ’80s and is primarily using the First Class cast, we know Wolverine is in that time period, and let’s be honest, he is the star of the franchise over everyone else. According to the release dates given by Fox, the two movies are being released just ten months apart (Apocalypse in May 2016, Wolverine 3 in March 2017). That would mean Jackman could conceivably shoot both movies back-to-back before calling it a day on the character.
So just what might Wolverine 3 actually be about? Speculation is it could adapt Mark Millar’s Old Man Logan storyline. When SFX brought up the possibility to Jackman, he said “Of course we’re looking at Old Man Logan, because that may be the only option left at this point! We are looking at a lot of different storylines. No one has jumped out. You can tell from my answer that we’re still working it out.” The original Old Man Logan story had a lot of characters from the greater Marvel Universe that are tied up rights-wise at Marvel Studios, like the Hulk and Hawkeye, but the basic premise can be re-adapted to be mutant-centric.
So here we are coming to a crossroads that comic books themselves came to in the 70’s and 80’s. What happens when these characters last so long that they can’t feasibly still look young? Comics have found various answers to this question, especially in the case of Wolverine who we’ve come to know as virtually immortal. However, Hugh Jackman is not immortal and thus studios will have to see how the character can continue past the Jackman era. It’ll be fun to watch.
Hey, I salute Hugh Jackman for going this far with the character. We were privileged to watch him play this role and he embraced it so well! He genuinely loved playing wolverine, even to the point of helping in the development and direction of the character on film. He’s even said he loved the fans and the comic-cons. All in all if he retires from playing wolverine, I’m happy and I wouldn’t want to watch anyone take over the part, but he’s done a lot, more then expected of him.
Also if he’s using that as a tactic to receive a bigger payday, then more power to him. He works hard and he deserves what he earns. This guy worked out 2 hours a day and ate chicken salads for months to get jacked and look like wolverine, all while filming for 10 hours a day.
hell, the wolverine explored taking away his healing factor, why not shoot for a combination of killable and the upcoming 3 months to live/death of wolverine?
If he is doing it for money that would be a dick move, think how many tv shows couldn’t carry on with out their main character.
Wolverine 3 should be Hulk VS Wolverine. Or at least one final showdown with Sabertooth.
Or just do an original story so the books won’t be better… Because there’re no books to fail by.
If they really do Old Man Logan, then Fox and Marvel/Disney better sort their shit out and actually do it justice. Anything less would be a disappointment and really shouldn’t be made.