BOOM October 2015 | Page 23

REPORT Hugh Jackman Suggests Tom Hardy As Next Wolverine Despite teasing that he could see himself playing the character for the rest of his career, Hugh Jackman made the bittersweet announcement to his fans earlier this year that the untitled Wolverine 3 scheduled for summer 2017 would be his last movie sporting claws for the XMen movie franchise. Twentieth Century Fox now needs to build and grow the X-Men series without their longtime poster boy star and they’re already starting on this process. Perhaps it was this last negotiation for Wolverine 3 that convinced X-Men producers and the studios to greenlight other solo character films for Deadpool and Gambit – both releasing around X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016 – in an effort to establish other bankable franchise stars. But just like the comics, and as we’re already seeing in the movies, characters don’t necessarily stay dead. Even the top-selling “Death of Wolverine” comic story arc from last year couldn’t stop Marvel from bring in another version of Old Man Logan in their current Secret Wars event. And with time-travel playing a crucial role in resetting the entire timeline of the X-Men movie franchise, allowing them to reintroduce younger versions of core characters, it’s likely, perhaps even inevitable, that Wolverine will return one day played by another actor. Hardy of course is no stranger to the comic book movie genre, having played Bane and expressing interest in playing him again if possible in the new DC cinematic universe. He is currently 38 (Jackman is 46) though which, even if he did appear in Wolverine 3, would be 40 at the time. That selection wouldn’t give the studio the lengthy multi-picture obligation they would aim for in this sort of casting.Recasting the Wolverine character was the original plan for X-Men: Days of Futu ɔ