First stepping into the role of Wolverine back in 2000, actor Hugh Jackman has now played the iconic comic book character six times, with his seventh outing just around the corner in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Of course, fans have been asking for years now how much longer Jackman can keep reprising the role. It’s not that people want to see someone else take over. In fact, most of us could never imagine anyone else portraying Wolvie except Jackman. It’s just that the actor is already 45 years old and he can’t stay young and fit forever.
Though we haven’t received an official answer from anyone involved in the franchise on when we could expect to see Jackman move on, in a recent interview with SFX, he revealed that the next outing will likely be his last.
When asked about the progress of The Wolverine 2, which will release on March 3rd, 2017, the actor said:
“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. I don’t know yet where Wolverine is going to go. We’re talking it through though. 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.”
While Jackman says that he hasn’t “signed on signed on” yet, I imagine that The Wolverine 2 is still a go. Fox has set a release date and from the sounds of it, things are moving pretty smoothly. That being said, it’s easy to see where Jackman is coming from and his hesitations are perfectly reasonable. Still, I have no doubt that he’ll give us one more outing with the character, unfortunately though, it might just be his last.
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