We all know that before the MCU, the superhero landscape was something akin to the wild west, where things were much more scattershot and disorganised, but this also led to greater risk-taking and creativity. Cameos from other properties popping up in Marvel movies weren’t really a thing back then, but Hugh Jackman did confess a while ago that Wolverine was supposed to appear in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man…but they lost his suit.
Now that Disney have acquire Fox, the X-Men and Fantastic Four can cross-over into the MCU, and the whole weird Sony deal allows for Spider-Man to exist in the MCU too. But back in 2013, Hugh Jackman spoke to HuffPost about him wanting to act with RDJ’s Iron Man and if he’d be allowed to walk across in the background of a Marvel movie – something that seemed nigh-on impossible at the time.
Jackman said; “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.”
“The problem was, we couldn’t find the suit. 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.”
“So, you know, I actually asked some high level people about it. Because 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.”
Jackman knows that the chaos of cameos, crossovers, multiverses and timelines in the movies is nothing compared to the comics; “But 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.”
Almost a decade later, both Wolverine and Iron Man are dead (RIP), but the world of superheroes being what it is, Jackman could easily pop up in an alternative universe or timeline of the MCU. While we wait to find out how the future of the MCU shakes out, check out what we know so far, in our guide to Phase 4.