Hugh Jackman Says He'll Play Wolverine "One Last Time"
Well, this had to happen eventually, but the day has finally come: Hugh Jackman, who has played Wolverine since Bryan Singer's X-Men arguably kicked off the current comic book movie boom back in 2000, has announced that he'll play the character "one last time."
Here's what Jackman posted to his Instagram account over the weekend:
The Wolverine director James Mangold quickly took to his Twitter account and confirmed that the film in question will be The Wolverine 2, which is currently slated to debut on March 3rd, 2017.
Last week, word hit the web that Jackman, Halle Berry, and Channing Tatum's Gambit would be making cameo appearances in Singer's upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse, but if Jackman's caption is to be believed, then maybe those rumors were false. Or maybe he just meant that he's suiting up for a full feature one last time with The Wolverine 2, and we still may see him pop up briefly in Apocalypse. It's a bit of a reversal from his recent comments, which indicated that he wanted to play Wolverine until he dies.
Either way, we now know that Jackman's tenure as Logan is coming to an end, and it's sort of sad to think about. He's been a constant presence in comic book movies for the past fifteen years (half my life), and while it will certainly be interesting to see what Fox decides to do with the character moving forward, it just won't be the same without Jackman "snikt"-ing his way through the X-Men universe. He's currently appeared as Wolverine in seven different X-films, so unless he pops up in Apocalypse, he'll finish up with a grand total of eight.
He's a tremendously talented actor, and I'm sure he'll do some awesome things in the coming years (some of my favorite performances of his are actually in non-X-Men movies like The Fountain and The Prestige), so we look forward to following his career, and of course, we look forward to seeing him don the claws one last time.