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Bonus! How Wolverine became Hugh Jackman (or the other way around)
🕑 Added 2025-08-17 16:00:22 +0000 UTCIt's hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Jackman in the role of Wolverine, and yet ... it very nearly wasn't. And it's even harder to imagine anyone other than Ian McKellen playing Magneto (successfully) ... and yet it nearly wasn't him, either. Who do we have to thank for these two actors landing their iconic roles? Oddly enough, it was a little bit thanks to Tom Cruise, and a little bit thanks to a young low-level executive named Kevin Feige.
For this week's bonus video, we'll dive into some of the very weird casting quirks around the first X-Men film, including a few actors who were considered and would surely have had very different interpretations of the characters. Michael Jackson as Professor X???
Backup link in case the video doesn't play: https://youtu.be/irvBGl8qllY
Comments
Kimberly Ehrlich
Great video as always. One thing, when you said that Michael Jackson said: “That’s why I should play Professor Xavier, head of the school of youngsters…” I heard it in a bad way. Michael Jackson wanting to be around more “youngsters”. 😬
Adam
Ha! Eastwood's two inches taller than Jackman! I don't honestly care how tall the actor is if they do the role well but it does crack me up given so few superheroes are iconically short, so the notion of Bob Hoskins in the part -- who at 5'6" would be only 3" taller than Wolverine is in the comics -- is indeed fascinating. That said, Hoskins more resembles Alpha's Flight's Puck, imho, but that guy's only 3 and half feet tall!
Zardogs! Zardogs!
Back in the mid-80s when I collected the X-Men comics and would hang around the comics shop shooting the breeze, the favored actor for Wolverine was Clint Eastwood. It was also generally agreed that it would only work if the movie was made very soon because he’d age out of it. I’ve talked to other Wolverine fans when the first film came out who remembered the same take. I think Jackman did a great job, but I can’t help but wonder what a younger Eastman would have been like.
