Hugh Jackman on Wolverine Return: ‘I Am Never Saying Never Again’

Hugh Jackman recently appeared on “The Graham Norton Show” (via Entertainment Weekly) where he proclaimed that he will never say he is never playing Wolverine again. Jackman announced he was done playing the iconic X-Men superhero after 2017’s “Logan,” which ended with the character’s death. But Jackman wasn’t being truthful. He returned as Wolverine seven years later in the 2024 Marvel blockbuster “Deadpool and Wolverine.”

“Every time you’re on , you gotta go, ‘Nope, I’m not doing that again,’ But then you keep making another one. And it’s a big big hit. So are you gonna have to do it again?” Jackman said. “Maybe. I am never saying ‘never’ ever again… But I did mean it when I said ‘never’ , until the day when I changed my mind. But I really did for quite a few years, I meant it.”

During last year’s “Deadpool and Wolverine” press tour, Jackman admitted that his feelings about staying in retirement from Wolverine were complicated after he saw the first “Deadpool” movie.

“I was like, ‘Those two characters together.’ I knew it. I knew the fans wanted it ever since I put on the claws, people talked about these two. So, that had always been there, but I just knew,” he told Fandango. “I rang Ryan . And I just said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Like, I hadn’t rung my agent, no one. I had to ring my agent and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I have just committed to a movie.’”

But not everyone was initially sold on the idea of Jackman coming back as Wolverine. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed to Empire that he originally warned Jackman against playing Wolverine 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.’”

As Marvel movie fans eventually found out in “Deadpool and Wolverine,” Jackman did not return as the iteration of Wolverine he played for decades and hung up in “Logan.” Marvel’s multiverse allowed the actor to play a new variant of Wolverine. Whether or not Jackman pops up as the mutant in next year’s “Avengers: Doomsday” or its sequel, “Avengers: Secret Wars,” remains to be seen. Many of Jackman’s original “X-Men” co-stars, from Ian McKellen to Patrick Stewart and James Marsden, are appearing in “Doomsday.”