One of the most annoying things one hears as a news reporter, or at least one of the most cynical and ignorantly flippant things, is how actors only do jobs for money. I.e., when Hugh Jackman finally agreed to return as Wolverine/Logan in “Deadpool 3,” it was because they finally decided to pay him the dump truck of money he always wanted and was holding out for. The problem with that is that it disregards the obscene amounts of money these actors are paid and how someone like Hugh Jackman would never need to play Wolverine again if he didn’t want to; he’s essentially set for life. It also disregards actors are regular human beings who—after a long hard job with a lot of training and physical action involved—often feel like they never ever want to play that role again (think Daniel Craig when he said he’d rather “break glass and slash my wrists” when asked if he would do James Bond again after just finishing “Spectre”). Actors, like people, change their minds, and time and distance can always help.
That certainly seems to be the case with this specific example as Jackman, who appeared on Jess Cagle’s XM podcast show, was asked about returning to the Wolverine role and was adamant that he was serious at the time (times) when he said he was done playing the Logan character and thought he’d never play him again.
“I would love to say it was planned, but it was not,” Jackman said of changing his mind, reneging on his claim, and deciding to play Logan again.
“I’m a way more straightforward person, and Ryan did try and cajole me into coming back for years. Annoyingly, years! ‘C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!’ And it was actually August 14, (2022); I remember it; it was the first day of our vacation,” he explained of the day he changed his mind (and it sounds more and more like the road trip film idea Reynolds revealed on Twitter a few years back was legitimate and not just one of his patented jokes).
“I was driving out, and it just came to me like that, and I rang Ryan as soon as I arrived, and he was absolutely floored,” Jackman continued explaining his eureka moment. “And interestingly, he was just about to have a meeting with Kevin Feige at Marvel, at 5 o’clock that afternoon, about ‘Deadpool’ movie.”
Still, Reynolds had to be sure. “And he goes, ‘This is really good timing, but are you really sure because I don’t want to say anything ,’” Jackman remembered. “I said, ‘I’m 100% sure, and I don’t know why because I was 100% sure I was out before.’ And now I’m 100% in.”
Asked if it was because he had an idea and one he wanted to do, Jackman said essentially said, yeah, kinda. But he admitted, it’d been rattling around in his brain since “Deadpool” one since 2016. “If I’m really honest, I’d announced ‘Logan’ was [to be] my last [movie], and then I went to see the ‘Deadpool’ movie, and I was 20 minutes in, and I was like ‘curses!’” he explained. “I love the movie, but all I could see was Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in ’48 Hours,’ I was like [thinking to himself], ‘this is something we haven’t done with the character; that’s the kind of dynamic we haven’t had before,’ and then I just put it aside, and I thought, ‘Nah, Nah, Nah, I’m done.’ And then we made ‘Logan,’ and I was super happy with it, but all because of this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines, now we can go back because it’s science, so I don’t have to screw with the ‘Logan’ timeline, and that was important to the fans.”
Well, there you go. While Jackman kind of had the dynamic for the characters—which sounds like the movie they are making, according to recent interviews—it sounds like his change of heart only happened suddenly in the summer of 2022. The third untitled “Deadpool” movie is currently set for November 8, 2024, which will have been six years since “Deadpool 2.” Listen to the full interview below.
