Kevin Feige almost shut down his own movie.
The Marvel head recalled in an Empire magazine interview having advised Hugh Jackman to not return as Wolverine for the upcoming third “Deadpool” installment. (Though “Deadpool vs. Wolverine” would have been pretty weird without Wolverine…)
Feige actually advised Jackman to stay away from playing Wolverine ever again.
“I said, ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Hugh. Don’t come back,’” Feige said. “‘You had the greatest ending in history with ‘Logan.’ That’s not something we should undo.’”
However, Feige now calls “Deadpool and Wolverine” an action film where the “stakes are universe-sized” as it toys with different timelines within the superhero franchise. The events of “Logan” are not altered by “Deadpool and Wolverine” — “Logan” is set in 2029, “Deadpool and Wolverine” is set in the present.
Jackman admitted to Empire that he needed some time to ruminate on Feige’s advice. So he went for a drive.
“I was about an hour into the drive,” Jackman said. “And that question came into my head: ‘What do I want to do?’ And as soon as I asked the question, I wanted to do ‘Deadpool & Wolverine.’ I just knew it. I drove for another hour. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I got out of the car, called Ryan [Reynolds], and said, ‘Ryan, if you’ll have me, I’m in.’”
Jackman added that “Deadpool and Wolverine” will show “different sides of Wolverine we haven’t seen before in the movies.”
Or, as co-star and “Deadpool” producer and writer Reynolds added, the third film “feels like the most Deadpool movie in the history of Deadpool” — and that’s in part due to Reynolds and Jackman’s very real friendship offscreen.
“As much as I take the ever-loving fucking piss out of him each and every day, underneath that is a genuine love story,” Reynolds said. “As adversarial as we are in the movie, the undercurrent is one of real love. Getting to spend time with my two closest friends, and waking up in the morning with a passionate devotion to say something so horrendous that they fall over laughing is a gift.”
