A Spider-Man Movie Almost Had A Huge X-Men Cameo - But One Thing Ruined It
The connectivity between all of the various Marvel movie properties is finally starting to come together. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine officially enters the MCU with the easter egg-laden trailer for "Deadpool and Wolverine" after being briefly referred to in other properties. But it turns out everyone's favorite slicing-and-dicing Canadian almost ended up making an appearance in an earlier Marvel film — but a missing suit meant the nonverbal cameo didn't happen.
"In the first 'Spider-Man' — Kevin Feige reminded me of this — we really tried to get me to come on and do something, whether it was a gag or just to walk through the shot or something," Jackman told The Huffington Post in 2013. The catch? Jackman couldn't find his Wolverine suit in time for the shoot. "The suit was stuck in some thing. And so when they were in New York when I was there, we couldn't get it together."
Jackman reports that he's both an optimist about such shared projects and honest about the cost of them. "The optimist in me goes, 'Why not? Why can't we do it? You know, a split cast or whatever?' And someone reminded that the amount of money Fox paid compared to the amount of money Disney paid is very different [laughs]. So how you split that pie up? God knows."
There's definitely something interesting about Jackman's anecdote that leaves the reader wondering which MCU film he might have surfaced in.
Which Spider-Man film would Wolverine have appeared in?
The timing of Jackman's anecdote is fascinating. Kevin Feige's involvement in it suggests that Jackman was offered a cameo in a film like "Captain America: Civil War," in which Tom Holland's Spider-Man simply appears. But in looking at the timeline, it's more likely that the first of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films, "The Amazing Spider-Man," is the right film, or even Tobey Maguire's final Spider-outing in 2007 — and both of those movies would have involved licensing discussions between Sony and Disney. But since Tom Holland didn't anchor his very first "Spider-Man"-centric Marvel Cinematic Universe solo film until 2017, it's quite possible that Jackman meant a Marvel film in which Spider-Man appears, and the character did not surface in the MCU until that Captain America sequel.
In any event, Jackman was clearly never the same after playing Wolverine and he enjoys playing the character he intended to retire with "Logan" in 2017. While Jackman acknowledges that wrangling so many studios can be quite an undertaking, he told The Huffington Post that he had hope all the way back in 2013 that his character would get to interact with other MCU properties. "In the comic books, what's great about it is they're just mashing together all the time — and it's awesome. And people are like, 'Yeah, well, let's get this one with that!' And, you know, I still think, one day, there may be an ability to do it." His dream will become reality — even though Marvel Studios allegedly tried to kill it initially – when "Deadpool and the Wolverine" hits theaters on July 26.