Actor Hugh Jackman will have starred in six X-Men films, as Wolverine, once X-Men Days of Future Past hits theaters next month on May 23. Seven X-Men movies if you count his cameo in X-Men: First Class. He's been portraying the character of Logan since the late 1990s when the first X-Men movie started filming for its 2000 release.
But all good things come to an end. Eventually, Jackman will no longer be Wolverine on the big screen and 20th Century Fox will recast a younger actor into the role within the next decade-ish.
Before this happens, Jackman will be Wolverine in the follow-up to X-Men Days of Future Past, 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse. Also, Jackman will most likely be Wolverine for one last time after X-Men: Apocalypse in the sequel to The Wolverine.
"I still am very ambitious for the character," Jackman said to SFX. "And tonally I feel like we corrected the ship with the last one [The Wolverine]. 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."
"Well, of course we’re looking at Old Man Logan, because that may be the only option left at this point! [laughs] We are looking at a lot of different story lines. No one has jumped out. You can tell from my answer that we’re still working it out. I’m working with Jim Mangold, which is exciting. Jim came on board The Wolverine after Darren [Aronofsky] left, so he inherited it. And of all the things that Jim can do, one of the great things he does is develop scripts. I’m excited to see what we can come up with, but I haven’t signed on signed on. I’m genuinely at that point where unless it’s better than the last one I’m not going to do it."
Bottom line, Jackman wants a better Wolverine movie than the last one for him to commit.
"I think it has to be better. I can still see where we can improve on the last one. I love the intimacy of that story, I liked the small stuff, I liked that it was a little unexpected. I don’t want to get into specifics, because it just upsets people, but there are certain parts of that story where I felt we were predictable. And I don’t think you need to do that with Wolverine. What’s exciting is that you can make it a more interior story, and people actually prefer that."
Will it be sad to see Jackman eventually move on from the role of Wolverine? Of course it will which is why Fox needs to figure out what the future holds for Wolverine in X-Men: Apocalypse and The Wolverine sequel because they need to use some means of strategically rebooting the character with a new actor. Maybe the villain Apocalypse can help out with that...
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