Somehow, Ryan Reynolds managed to convince his long-time friend Hugh Jackman to revive Logan for the Deadpool & Wolverine movie.
The new film comes 24 years after fans first saw Hugh debut in the pivotal role and both men were feeling a little nostalgic at the UK Sneak Peek Fan Event.
As the 55-year-old star put on his adamantium claws for the first time, his slightly younger friend was still ‘in the womb’.
At the Deadpool & Wolverine event in London on Thursday night, the duo spoke to Metro.co.uk about what their lives looked like in 2000.
‘Well, I was in the womb, just getting ready to hatch,’ joked Ryan, 47, who dodged the red and yellow colour scheme and opted for a teal suit with a white t-shirt.
Hugh, in a coordinating navy suit and sage green t-shirt, grinned at his friend and co-star before revealing he nearly starred in ‘a little Australian film’.
That first X-Men movie two decades ago, very nearly had actor Dougray Scott as the iconic claw-wielding hero — but fate intervened.
His delay on Mission: Impossible 2 meant our beloved Hugh was crowned as Wolverine at the last minute and it completely changed his life forever.
He shared: ‘A little Australian film that was like a $3million (£2.3million) budget directed by Alan White, and I can’t tell you the name of it…’
‘Wow, what year was that?’ asked Ryan, with Hugh confirming it was ‘1999 we started, October – and then in 2000 it was released.’
That mystery film was Risk which grossed a $181,763 (£140,856) worldwide box office compared to X-Men’s $296,339,528 (£229,640,316.06).
X-Men hit cinemas on July 14, 2000, after a lengthy battle to get it over the line due to concern about risky superhero films failing to capture audience attention.
As the Greatest Showman star reminisced, Blake Lively’s husband revealed he was ‘cutting his chops’ on a sitcom at the time.
‘[I was doing] Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place, cutting my chops,’ Ryan shared. ‘It was one of the best jobs I ever had in my entire life – live audience, sitcom…’
Nodding towards his Aussie buddy, he added: ‘And then I was on my way the following year to Sydney, Australia for the Sydney Olympics.’
It’s unthinkable now that anyone else could have been the now beloved Logan, prompting strong fan response when it was rumoured Marvel may recast him as they introduce X-Men to the MCU.
However, Russell Crowe had actually been the casting directors’ first choice but the Gladiator star — who would later work with Hugh in Les Mis — turned it down.
Hugh was brought on three weeks into filming but Marvel’s top boss Kevin Feige also once said he was almost dismissed as the 6ft 3 actor was too tall to play Logan, a short king.
Wolverine has become one of the icons of comic heroes, with this role skyrocketing the then-unknown Australian into Hollywood.
Fans feel fiercely protective over the send-off in 2017’s Logan, which saw an aged Wolverine meet his daughter and eventually die (sorry spoiler but it was seven years ago).
When Ryan announced he had brought Hugh back to the fold, there was a lot of debate about exactly how he would do that without destroying that story.
Deadpool and Wolverine writers clearly heard that criticism and that perceived ‘desecration’ is the butt of the joke for the blood-soaked opening number.
Teasing the plot before the 30-minute preview at the event, director Shawn Levy told us: ‘What I will say is that when Hugh called and said, “I want in”, we knew this was a sacred opportunity because we have reverence for Logan as a character and as a film.
‘And so I think it became our most important job for Ryan and I, as we wrote this and as we made it, to make sure that Logan was treated with respect. But then we also gave Hugh as our buddy a chance to play colours and sides of Logan, that he hasn’t in prior films.’
He shared that the trio are all ‘very close friends’ in real life, so it didn’t feel like an ‘intruder’ in the friendship but a threeway ‘brotherhood’.
Tonally, Deadpool films are unlike anything the MCU or Fox universes have done before or since and Shawn revealed how this works when it comes to our gruff and grumpy Logan.
‘This is quite comedic, it is Deadpool after all,’ the 55-year-old shared. ‘But it’s also surprisingly emotional in ways that I think audiences don’t currently expect.
‘And we have shown none of that. And I think that the combination of humour and heart is a first for Hugh and Logan – and to the extent that this movie gets quite poignant, it is a first for Deadpool as well.
‘I think the biggest challenge was, if you have Deadpool and Wolverine, there’s gonna be a lot of fighting, but you don’t want to have action fatigue. And so for me, the challenge was differentiating all these different action sequences and fights from each other, so that it’s still the same characters, but the language of each fight evolves and changes over the course of the movie.’
Ryan joked during the event that he had a ‘terrible’ version of Deadpool 3 ready to pitch but Hugh called him in the nick of time in 2022.
He had watched Deadpool days after announcing he was retiring Wolverine and ‘remembered looking at the screen and going “oops”.’
‘I could see why these two characters are perfect together,’ the star shared but it was in 2022 when ‘something was screaming’ inside him to actually go for it.
Ryan, who called both Deadpool and Wolverine ‘career-defining’ roles added that filming was ‘like a dream come true’ as he got to do it with his closest friends.
He also said, without a doubt, the one person he would love to bring into a Deadpool film was the one and only Taylor Swift.
Deadpool and Wolverine finally hits cinemas on July 25, 2024.
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