After years of speculating, in 2022, Marvel Studios confirmed that Deadpool would officially join the MCU for a third installment of the R-rated comic book franchise at the start of Phase Six, Deadpool & Wolverine. This would mark the first official character of the Fox X-Men universe joining the MCU (although Patrick Stewart as a variant Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness kinda counts too, we suppose).

In a post on his Instagram story, Ryan Reynolds also gave us a closer look at Cassandra Nova’s sling ring. It looks like two infinity stones, the Time Stone and the Reality Stone, might be appended to it. We guess we’ll have to wait and see just how that works.

Deadpool & Wolverine‘s latest teaser trailer brings yet another new Deadpool into the mix. This time it’s Lady Deadpool.

We can’t wait to find out who will be playing this red-clad gal. Additionally, Cowboy Deadpool also makes an appearance.

Here is everything we know so far about Deadpool & Wolverine.

Title

Thanks to a Super Bowl trailer (check it out below!), we know that this film, formerly called Deadpool 3, is actually Deadpool & Wolverine.

Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Plot

The plot of Deadpool & Wolverine remains a mystery. All we know is that Hugh Jackman is returning as Wolverine, and that it takes place before the feral X-Man’s death in Logan. In fact, Jackman has confirmed that time travel will be involved in the threequel in a big way.

While originally, Deadpool & Wolverine was called Deadpool 3, director Shawn Levy wants to make sure fans understand that the title change is not just cosmetic. Levy notes to Screen Rant:

As far as crafting the Deadpool & Wolverine story, I just felt privileged every day because you’re talking about two massive movie stars in their most iconic roles. It also gave me an opportunity. It’s the third Deadpool movie, but it’s not Deadpool 3. It’s a different thing that’s very much Deadpool and Wolverine. And it’s not trying to copycat anything from the first two movies. They were awesome, but this is a two-hander character adventure.

As most folks know by now, Deadpool’s third solo film will reunite him with his X-Men Origins: Wolverine co-star. Deadpool and Wolverine will work together, although they have made it very clear that these two characters “hate each other.” It will not be a love-fest in this story. But the fact that Deadpool & Wolverine is smack in the middle of the Multiverse Saga should give us all a clue as to what’s going to go down, and probable multiversal shenanigans will ensue.

Dogpool, of course, will also star.

Make sure to follow him on Instagram.

We also now know what Deadpool & Wolverine‘s new official logo looks like thanks to a fun poster.

Deadpool & Wolverine will, of course, be the first R-rated movie in the MCU. And that means it’s not pulling any punches. In fact, its latest official synopsis drops two F-bombs. Let’s take a look:

Marvel Studios presents their most significant mistake to date—Deadpool & Wolverine. A listless Wade Wilson toils away in civilian life. His days as the morally flexible mercenary, Deadpool, behind him. When his homeworld faces an existential threat, Wade must reluctantly suit-up again with an even more reluctantlier… reluctanter? Reluctantest? He must convince a reluctant Wolverine to—Fuck. Synopses are so fucking stupid.

Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Cast

We know Hugh Jackman will return, along with the very obvious Ryan Reynolds. Here’s who else we know about: Karan Soni, cab driver Dopinder, Leslie Uggams, Emma Corrin, and Matthew Macfadyen. In exciting news, Morena Baccarin and Stefan Kapicic are reprising their roles as Vanessa and Colossus in Deadpool & Wolverine. So are Rob Delaney’s Peter, Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenage Warhead), and Shioli Kutsuna (Yukio). Jennifer Garner’s Elektra from the 2003 Daredevil Marvel Fox movie is also reported to reprise her role in this MCU film.

Behind the Scenes

Deadpool & Wolverine‘s director for this third outing will be Shawn Levy, most recently known for his work on Stranger Things. This would be a reunion for Levy and Reynolds, as the pair previously worked together on the movie Free Guy. Levy is also known for the time travel movie The Adam Project.

On the writing side of things are Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, writers for the popular animated series Bob’s Burgers. The writers for the first two Deadpool films, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, are also contributing to movie number three’s screenplay, as is Ryan Reynolds himself.

Deadpool & Wolverine Release Date

Deadpool & Wolverine will arrive on July 26, 2024.

Originally published on January 4, 2023.

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Deadpool & Wolverine is almost here, and the fandom couldn’t be more excited to see “Marvel Jesus” and his adamantium-boned buddy team up at last. While we still don’t know many things about the film, the trailers have given us some rather large clues as to the plot. And we think those clues hint strongly that Deadpool & Wolverine will lead directly into Avengers: Secret Wars, the final chapter of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. What we do know is that Logan and Wade are trapped together in Void, the repository of dead timelines first seen in Loki. We also know that they’re fighting X-Men villain Cassandra Nova.

In that Mad Max-esque Void, there are several known mutants from the X-Men films, like Pyro and Sabretooth. This is the first MCU project that officially canonized the Fox X-Men films as part of the larger cosmology, much as Spider-Man: No Way Home did for the pre-Tom Holland Spidey films. So we think it’s all leading up to a classic X-Men reunion, probably fighting the Avengers in Secret Wars. One thing we feel confident in saying about any of these Multiversal mutants coming our way is that the Wolverine from Logan definitely won’t be resurrected.

Deadpool & Wolverine to Feature Zombie Logan? Probably Not

Marvel Studios is leaning hard into the Multiverse right now. Therefore, we know that Jackman’s arrival means they are not going to undo Wolverine’s death in Logan. As it stands, that movie felt disconnected and in its own universe, even from the original X-Men films. After all, the events of Logan don’t really line up with the restored future we saw at the end of Days of Future Past. So with the Multiverse Saga in play now, we think that Logan can remain its own thing. Whatever version of Wolverine we see in Deadpool & Wolverine definitely won’t be the same one who died in Logan. They won’t dig him up and Frankenstein him back to life, so to speak. We think the integrity of James Mangold’s film is safe.

A Deadpool and Wolverine Road Trip?!

In the past, Ryan Reynolds has said that his original plans for Deadpool & Wolverine involved a “Rashomon-style road trip with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.” We feel that is probably still the case, only with a Multiversal bent this time. One particular scene in the trailer of Logan and Wade jumping through a mystical portal, very similar to that of Doctor Strange’s portal, suggests it is. To us, that indicates they’ll be reality-hopping together, at least part of the time. We honestly believe that with Hugh Jackman coming back for Deadpool & Wolverine, he’ll stick around for one more outing afterward, and it’ll be Avengers: Secret Wars. And maybe he will bring some of his fellow X-Men with him.

Deadpool & Wolverine Will Lead to an X-Men Reunion

Problematic director aside, the original X-Men films still matter. Their success paved the way for Spider-Man and eventually the entire MCU. And Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige himself has a bit of a sentimental soft spot for the first X-Men movies. They were his first on-screen credits in a Marvel film after all. That’s why he included Patrick Stewart in Multiverse of Madness, and Kelsey Grammer’s Beast in The Marvels. Those films started him on the path that led him to become head of Marvel Studios. So before the inevitable reboot of Marvel’s mutants, which is on the horizon, he might want to pay homage to the ones who started it all. It’s just a question of which X-Men make the cut. We know several confirmed secondary mutants already. If they’re in this, some of the main team must be coming our way, too.

Is Deadpool & Wolverine a Prelude to Avengers: Secret Wars?

If the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars follows the comics in even the smallest way, it will see the introduction of Battleworld. In the comics, that was a patchwork planet made out of the remains of several realities. But each of those realities became slightly different (or sometimes very different) when merging into Battleworld. So one of those realities could be a version of the Fox X-Men universe. It doesn’t even have to follow the continuity (such as it is) of the Fox X-Men films, because they have recreated it as something new. As we stated, we know that a good chunk of the film takes place in the Void from Loki, the repository world of dead realities. Could the Void simply become Battleworld in Secret Wars?

Given all that, we could still get the original actors back in their roles. Meaning we could get a proper send-off for not only Hugh Jackman, but also Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Kelsey Grammer, and Patrick Stewart. He recently hinted broadly as to his return. We think he knows something he’s not sharing with the rest of the class (of Xavier’s School).

Could We See Costumed X-Men at Long Last?

Kevin Feige was one of the few true Marvel Comics fans on the set of X-Men, according to Hugh Jackman. In fact, Jackman has said in interviews that Feige snuck him Wolverine comics to his trailer, on the sly, as comic books were forbidden on set. And he also fixed Logan’s hair to be more comics-accurate. Now that he’s in charge of the whole enchilada, we knew he couldn’t resist finally putting Jackman in a comics-accurate costume. So if any of the other original X-Men show up, we think this holds true for them as well. Imagine if we see the 2000s cast, flying into action as the X-Men: The Animated Series theme plays? We’re losing our minds over it already.

Now, maybe Jackman’s return to play Wolverine really is “one last time.” But given his comments in the past about how fun it would be to be part of the MCU someday, we have a feeling that Deadpool & Wolverine is almost certainly not the end quite yet. And the X-Men might stand next to the Avengers and the Fantastic Four in battle before it’s all said and done.

Originally published on September 28, 2022.

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Often, the parts of superhero movies the studios are terrified of spoiling in trailers are revealed months in advance via toys. And the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine is no different. This collector’s 1/6 scale figure from Hot Toys/Sideshow Collectibles replicates the look of Hugh Jackman’s Logan from the film, complete with the iconic mask from the comic books at last. Although we’ve seen the mask before in certain promotional images, this figure is the best idea we have outside the film itself as what Jackman will look like in his full comics-accurate Wolverine regalia. You can check out several images, as well as read the official description, below:

Click To View Gallery

The screen-accurate collectible action figure is crafted based on the appearance of Wolverine portrayed by Hugh Jackman from the upcoming theatrical release, features a newly developed masked head sculpt with interchangeable lower faces showcasing different expressions, a highly poseable muscular body, arms made in silicone material with seamless elbows design, carefully tailored costume that replicates his battle outfit, multiple interchangeable hands with attachable bladed claws for additional posing options.

This Deadpool & Wolverine figure includes one newly developed masked head sculpt with three interchangeable lower faces, a screen-accurate facial expression, and detailed beard and skin textures. Wolverine stands at approximately 31 cm tall, and a body with over 30 points of articulation. They made the arms from silicone material with seamless elbow joints. There are 6 pieces of interchangeable hands including one pair of fists, one pair of relaxed hands, and one pair of open hands. The Deluxe Edition comes with a Hugh Jackman maskless face sculpt, as well as sleeves.

The costume is a yellow, navy, and black color Wolverine suit with weathering effects. It comes with one set of body armor, including chest guard, shoulder guards, and gauntlets. Logan also has one pair of navy and black colored boots. Of course, Logan has a pair of bladed claws (attachable to the back of the hands). A specially designed figure stand with the movie logo and character nameplate is also part of the package. The price for this bad boy is $280.00, and $340.00 for the Deluxe Edition, with shipping expected April to September 2025. You can click here to pre-order the Hot Toys Deadpool & Wolverine figures.

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If we had to predict what Deadpool & Wolverine‘s box office total will look like we’d guess “all the money.” How close will we get with that prognostication? We’re about to start finding out, because tickets for Deadpool & Wolverine have now gone on sale. And Marvel Studios celebrated its big multiversal pre-sale with a new promo and a new poster for the highly-anticipated movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine tickets are now officially on sale everywhere movie tickets are sold. That’s one big step closer to letting fans see the oozing sexual chemistry between Wade and Logan. Another is this new teaser for the film, which actually reveals there’s slightly less sexual chemistry than we thought. (Though definitely not zero!)

Deadpool & Wolverine‘s new poster does confirm there’s still plenty of animosity between the two, though.

Yeah, we’re sticking with “all the money.” And it’s a good bet on our end. Fandango has revealed that “Deadpool & Wolverine has broken Fandango’s best first-day ticket sales record for 2024. The film is also the best first-day pre-seller from the Deadpool franchise, surpassing the first day of ticket sales for Deadpool and Deadpool 2.”

Additionally, AMC’s CEO revealed that Deadpool & Wolverine has sold more day one tickets than any other R-rated movie in AMC’s history.

There you have it. Deadpool & Wolverine releases on July 26, so snag your tickets today.

Originally published on May 20, 2024.

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We can all agree Logan is one of the finest superhero movies ever. Even Kevin Feige thinks so—enough that he originally told Hugh Jackman not to come back as Wolverine and to keep Logan as his final outing as the hero. Of course, both Jackman and Feige ignored this advice, and Jackman will indeed play Wolverine in the MCU’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

But, here’s what Feige shared with Jackman. He reveals, “I said, ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Hugh. Don’t come back. You had the greatest ending in history with Logan. That’s not something we should undo.’” Oops! Of course, Feige also confirms the MCU won’t fully “undo” Logan because Hugh Jackman won’t play “the exact same Logan we’ve met in previous X-Men movies.” So, there’s that. Still, it’s funny how these things go.

For his part, Jackman previously shared that choosing to return to the character of Wolverine was a long process. Jackman recently shared of his return as Wolverine that despite his own reservations and apparently, the reservations of Feige and others, he reached a point where he just knew he had to come back.

The actor notes, “I was on my way – I was just driving – and literally just like a bolt of lightning came this knowing, deep in my gut, that I wanted to do this film with Ryan… for Deadpool and Wolverine to come together. And Jacqueline, I swear to you, when I said I was done, I really thought I was done. But, in the back of my head, ever since I saw Deadpool 1, I was like ‘Those two characters together…’ I knew it: I knew the fans wanted it. Ever since I put on the claws fans have talked about these two, so that had always been there, but I just knew.”

Jackman adds, “And I literally couldn’t wait to arrive. Soon as I arrived, 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 we’re glad to see Jackman join the MCU for one last turn as Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine, and we bet Kevine Feige is, too, despite his early reservations.

Originally published on May 3, 2024.

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Hugh Jackman? More like Hugh Backman. Back as Logan, that is. And when he returns he’ll help his buddy Wade Wilson do more than save a universe or two. He’ll help Wade set a personal onscreen record. Deadpool & Wolverine‘s listing from AMC Theaters says it will have a runtime of two hours and seven minutes. That unofficial length would mean it’s the Merc With a Mouth’s longest movie entry yet.

AMC Theaters now has an official page (which we first learned about at Collider) for Deadpool & Wolverine. It states the film clocks in at 127 minutes. (Great length! No notes!) That exceeds both the 1:48 length (108 minutes) of 2016’s Deadpool and the 1:59 runtime (119 minutes) for Deadpool 2. That extra space should allow for even more MCU and Fox X-Men era surprise cameos.

But we’ll also be fine if it just means more of Deadpool and Wolverine.

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Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer are set to star in a Robin Hood retelling, The Death of Robin Hood… But don’t expect any green tunics here. This Robin Hood retelling will be a dark one, as you can probably tell from the title. A Quiet Place: Day One director Michael Sarnoski will write and direct the project, so we know it won’t be all fun and games.

Deadline reveals of this Jackman-led Robin Hood film, “The film is a darker reimagining of the classic Robin Hood tale. Set of its time, the film will see the title character grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, a battleworn loner who finds himself gravely injured and in the hands of a mysterious woman who offers him a chance at salvation. Production is due to begin in February 2025.”

Hugh Jackman won’t be bursting into a rendition of “Oo-de-lally,” at any rate. Sarnoski shares, “It has been an incredible opportunity to reinvent and freshly innovate the story we all know of Robin Hood… Securing the perfect cast to transform the script to screen was essential. I could not be more thrilled and trusting in Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer to bring this story to life in a powerful and meaningful way.”

But can we have just one scene with Hugh Jackman in Robin Hood’s green tunic? Or maybe even a yellow one?

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The MCU loves a yellow super suit. First, it gave Charlie Cox’s Daredevil his red and yellow outfit when he appeared on the Disney+ series, She-Hulk. And now, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have officially revealed what costume Wolverine will wear for his MCU debut. And no surprise, Deadpool 3, a.k.a. Deadpool & Wolverine, has opted to give Wolverine his bright yellow (and blue) suit, a costume pulled straight from the pages of Marvel Comics. Although Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine has appeared on our movie screens many times, his yellow comics-accurate suit has not made the live-action jump… Until now. But a bright yellow suit on this extra grumpy version of Wolverine in Deadpool 3 seems exactly appropriate.

You can check out the first-look image of Wolverine’s MCU costume from Deadpool 3 below. Then, take a minute to fully appreciate the incredible yellow-ness of this suit.

We bet we’re going to hear Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool refer to Jackman’s Wolverine as “Sunshine” at least once in the movie, thanks to this costume. And, the yellow and red suits for these heroes might lead to some ketchup and mustard jokes in Deadpool 3, much to Wolverine’s annoyance. But Wolverine had to eventually suit up in the comics’ yellow and blue X-Men costume in a Marvel movie.

Another Look at Wolverine’s Yellow Deadpool 3 Suit Comes From an Unexpected Source

Deadpool & Wolverine‘s first trailer did not feature another look at Wolverine’s yellow suit. But now, another glimpse at how the comics-accurate suit will look has emerged from an unexpected source, a drink cup displayed at Cinema Con. Although this rendition of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine seems more like concept art than a true visual from the movie, it’s still interesting to take a look at the details. You can check out the image below.

New Images Reveals the Finer Details of the Deadpool & Wolverine Yellow MCU Suit

Our latest look at Deadpool & Wolverine zooms in on the finer details of Hugh Jackman’s new yellow suit. You can take in all the finer points of the costume below.

The Marvel Comics Origins of Wolverine’s Classic Costume, the Yellow and Blue Suit

So how did we arrive at this Deadpool 3 look for Wolverine? Wolverine made his debut in The Incredible Hulk #181 in 1974, wearing his classic yellow and blue costume. The mask was slightly different at first. But by the time the Canadian mutant became a part of the X-Men in Giant Size-X-Men #1 the following year, the classic yellow and blue suit as we know it was introduced, with the larger Wolverine mask. That look stuck until 1980, when Logan received his brown and tan suit. The second Wolverine costume lasted a decade, but he went back to his yellow and blue for the X-Men: The Animated Series era in 1992. This is likely why Wolverine’s yellow suit is seen as THE costume for a generation.

If there’s a true direct from the comic books inspiration here, the Deadpool 3 costume looks the most like Wolverine’s in Astonishing X-Men, which ran from 2004-2008. The great John Cassaday designed that outfit. The biggest detail that doesn’t match up to the Astonishing X-Men look is that Wolverine now has sleeves instead of bare arms. Oh, and no mask that we can see yet. But we expect that’s coming. You simply can’t have a complete classic yellow Wolverine costume without the mask, right?

Deadpool 3 Brings Us This Iconic Look in Hugh Jackman’s Potentially Final Turn as Wolverine

Fans have long-clamored to see this classic-colored costume on the hero. And the MCU loves to deliver an Easter egg if it can. As mentioned, yellow might seem an odd color for the hero known for being a bit of a grump. But, although Wolverine has worn many different costumes in his long Marvel Comics’ career, his suits have more often than not included yellow in them. It seems like Hugh Jackman had to don the color as Wolverine at least once before he hung up his claws.

Deadpool 3 director Shawn Levy shared more about Wolverine’s potential final turn on screen and bringing the yellow suit to life. He noted, “Like the rest of the world, I’ve waited two decades to see Wolverine in a whole movie with Deadpool, and I don’t know if this is our last shot at Wolverine on screen, so I was going to make goddamned sure we get the old yellow and blue just once, and that we get it right.”

And, in order to do that, Wolverine’s yellow costume went through “multiple, multiple, multiple iterations and fittings.” But Levy adds, “It also helps that I’m making this movie within the MCU, so I have access to an army of the nerdiest nerds available to a Marvel project.”

Could Deadpool & Wolverine Be Hugh Jackman’s Final Outing as Wolverine?

Before Deadpool 3 became a reality, Hugh Jackman said his Wolverine days had ended, and he would not play the character again. Of course, we can never say never, but those previous pronouncements make it likely the actor will be done with the role of Wolverine, yellow suit or otherwise, after the Deadpool movie. If this is indeed Hugh Jackman’s last time as the hero, then it’s fitting to end it on this classic note. Finally, we will see Wolverine, as we’ve come to know him, in the costume we most associate with the role.

Marvel Studios had slated Deadpool 3 to release on May 3, 2024. But we may see a shift in that release date depending on when the studios agree to fair compensation and support for their writers and actors.

Originally published on July 10, 2023.

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Logan is dead. Long live Wolverine. Hugh Jackman’s iconic big-screen character is truly back—rather than just his shadow—in the newest trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine. Only, he’s not the hero we remembered. Deadpool & Wolverine brings us a very different Wolverine than the one we once knew. He’s a failure. But his foul-mouthed friend wants to give him a shot at redemption. Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool needs to save his world, and he needs Logan to do that.

This definitely ain’t your grandma’s Disney. Or your mom’s. Or, you know, anyone’s. The MCU’s first R-rated film is here to do anything it wants. Well, anything it wants except cocaine. According to its trailer, that’s apparently the line Deadpool & Wolverine can’t cross, per Kevin Feige. That lack of “disco dust” doesn’t look like it’s going to stop Deadpool and Wolverine from having a hell of a good time together, though.

This Deadpool & Wolverine trailer is full of movie references (Fury Road!) and action. It’s also our first real look at Emma Corrin’s terrifying villain, Cassandra Nova. But most importantly this trailer offers our first insight into the actual plot, which will see Deadpool recruit a Wolverine Variant to help him save his dimension.

The trailer even brings us some of the surprise Deadpool & Wolverine cameos we’re expecting to see. But it does leave space for many, many more. Who created that sorcerer portal the two jumped through? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Deadpool & Wolverine comes from Stranger Things‘ Shawn Levy. The movie will mark his third time directing Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy, The Adam Project). While Levy has said this film is not Deadpool 3, it still features many returning stars from the previous two Deadpool entries. Those back for more f***ing fun include Karan Soni, Morena Baccarin, Stefan Kapičić, Brianna Hildebrand, Leslie Uggams, Rob Delaney, and Shioli Kutsuna. Matthew Macfadyen is also joining the fray as a new TVA agent.

Deadpool & Wolverine join forces—one a little more reluctantly than the other—this summer on July 26, 2024. Long live friendship. And hopefully Wade’s world.

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Hugh Jackman was adamant that Logan would be his final time playing Wolverine. He surely meant it when he said it. But we always know that no matter how much a performer might truly believe they are done with a character, people can always change their mind. We also know comic book superheroes never stay dead for long. Plus, he said all of that before Disney surprised everyone by buying Fox and its big screen rights to both the X-Men franchise and Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with a Mouth. That’s a big reason Jackman is back doing something he swore he never would. And we finally got to see him in his iconic role during this year’s Super Bowl, which aired Marvel Studios long-awaited first trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine.

Well, we at least got to see his shadow.

“Everyone deserves a happy ending.” That’s an official tagline from Disney. Disney.

Seeing Deadpool teaming up with the Mouse House is almost as good as seeing him teaming up with Wolverine, as the first-ever rated-R MCU movie is officially on the clock. The franchise’s only 2024 big screen release (and its de facto X-Men Origins: Wolverine reunion) finally gave fans of both Deadpool and Wolverine the trailer they’ve been craving during the NFL’s championship game.

It opens with Wade and his silly wig celebrating his birthday with both the (still alive) members of Task Force X and his loved ones. But his entire world (and cinematic universe) is upended by the arrival of TVA agents. They officially bring the Merc With a Mouth into the MCU. From there he’s tasked with being a hero among heroes. He’s also among villains, as X-Men‘s Aaron Stanford shows up as a Variant of his character Pyro. He’s just one of the many Easter eggs from both franchises that pop up in this trailer.

That’s all prelude to the biggest moment, when Wolverine shows in costume after appearing earlier in the trailer from behind at a table. He finds Wade on the ground where Deadpool asks for help. Instead he gets adamantium claws. And we get the Deadpool movie we’ve always wanted.

Deadpool 3 comes from director and frequent Reynolds collaborator Shawn Levy. Bob’s Burgers Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin are the duo behind the script. And the film also stars Karan Soni, Leslie Uggams, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Morena Baccarin, Stefan Kapicic, Rob Delaney, Brianna Hildebrand, and Shioli Kutsuna.

We need to see this movie right now. Unfortunately we have to wait. The movie doesn’t arrive in f***** theaters until this summer on July 26, 2024. Will it truly mark Jackman’s last time playing Wolverine? It wouldn’t matter even if he said it will. Thankfully.

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Disney and Deadpool are an interesting match. And many people have been eagerly following Deadpool 3 news to better understand how the Disney-owned Marvel Studios and the previously Fox Entertainment Group’s Deadpool might come together. In previous, Kevin Feige promised that Deadpool 3 would be an MCU movie and that it would remain R-rated, a first for the franchise. And now, we get our first look at this odd-couple pairing. But it comes with an even odder, more exciting couple. Welcome, Deadpool, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And in the same breath, welcome, Wolverine, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And surprise, welcome Hugh Jackman as Wolverine to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Deadpool 3.

If you’re wondering what this means for Logan and Wolverine’s big screen continuity, though, don’t worry, they have answers. Sort of.

Yep, that’s right. What starts as just a casual video from Ryan Reynolds becomes so much more. Because we are getting our MCU Wolverine, baby. And that MCU Wolverine is going to be Hugh Jackman in Deadpool 3. For so long, everyone has been asking, who will play the MCU’s Wolverine? So, of course, the MCU had to answer with the most obvious answer that no one expected to hear. We don’t know if Jackman intends to continue to be the MCU’s Wolverine, but we’ll get him for at least for one more movie. Everyone’s heads are exploding right now in a way that will surely please Deadpool.

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman Address the Logan/Deadpool 3 Question

We thought we saw the end of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in Logan. (As did director James Mangold.) But this is a comic book character we’re talking about, after all, which means a surprise return is not only possible, it’s expected.

We still have questions, though, about what the Greatest Adamantium Showman’s return in Deadpool 3 means for the “end” of his story. Fortunately, Reynolds and Jackman are here to help address them…in exactly the way you’d expect.

Ah, yes, that clears everything up. Logan takes place years after Deadpool 3, and they both really like Wham! (Who doesn’t!) Jackman also recently noted to Sirius XM’s Radio Andy program:

Because of this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines, now we can go back, because…it’s science. And so I don’t have to screw with the Logan timeline, which was important to me, and I think probably to the fans, too.

Sounds like potential time travel is in the works. And what’s that about a device? For that answer and for answers to questions about the multiverse, the existence of mutants in Earth-616, and the million other queries we have, we’ll just have to wait.

R-Rated Deadpool and Wolverine in the MCU

In previous, Feige noted he felt excited to bring a “very different type of character [to] the MCU.” And Deadpool certainly is that, but also, he isn’t. In many ways, Wade Wilson and Ryan Reynolds both make a lot of sense in the world of the MCU. The franchise has already been pushing the envelope with entries such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This is the logical next step. There are, after all, plenty of kid-friendly options to choose from among the MCU’s many, many movies. And with High Jackman and Wolverine in the mix for Deadpool 3, we can’t wait for what’s certainly in store for us. This will no doubt also be a Wolverine like we’ve never seen him before.

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine has appeared in an R-rated movie before. But we have a feeling Jackman’s Wolverine rendition in Logan and Deadpool 3 may feel a little different. Recently, Jackman shared more about what we could expect from the new MCU Wolverine. Will we see an angrier Logan or a gentler version of the character? Jackman responded with the obvious, saying:

“He’s definitely angrier, acerbic, grumpy, and he’s gonna take a lot of free shots at Ryan Reynolds, let me tell you… Physically, that is.” It definitely sounds like we’ll see a Wolverine that’s totally new. And that Deadpool better watch out. Reynolds recently confirmed this news, sharing with Variety, “What we pitched him was enough of a divergence from the character that he knows and the character that he’s left behind, that it gives him something completely new to play and something that he’s really excited to do.”

Additionally, Jackman recently offered more insight about the relationship between Deadpool and Wolverine in the MCU. He described the pair’s relationship to The Empire Film Podcast saying:

“10 being really close, zero being — that’s what we are, we are zero. We are opposites. Hate each other. He’s annoyed by him. Wants to be a million miles away from him or punch him in the head. So, unfortunately, he can’t be a million miles away from him in the movie, so I’m probably going to punch him in the head a lot… [They are] Polar opposites. He’s my vinegar to his sugar. He’s the fast-talking, quick-word loudmouth and my character just wants to punch him in the head.”

That’s a lot of punching, for sure.

Deadpool 3 and Phase 6 of the MCU

Jackman has said in previous that he won’t play Wolverine again and was retired from the role. But we guess the siren song of Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool, and the MCU called him back. He notes to Variety that he actually thought about it for a long time, but it took him longer to get onboard. In fact, Reynolds asked Jackman to come back as Wolverine for Deadpool 3 “on the daily” for approximately three years. And had nearly given up when Jackman finally agreed to return to the character.

As for Deadpool himself, we still don’t yet know if Deadpool will hail from a different multiverse in Deadpool 3 or if the move will explain he’s been kicking around the MCU all along, just out of sight. Either way, we are very happy to have him. And with Ryan Reynolds overseeing his long-time character, we’re confident he’s going to turn out just right. Not to mention, we can’t wait to see which of our MCU favs he (and now maybe Wolverine) eventually interact get to meet.

Deadpool 3‘s R-rated nature really does open the door to many new possibilities in the MCU. We wonder if Deadpool will remain a stand-alone R-rated arm, or whether other heroes will get to fight a little dirtier. We guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Deadpool 3, now with more Hugh Jackman Wolverine-fun, was slated to release on September 6, 2024. But now it will release on November 8, 2024. Although the MCU hasn’t said for sure, it could be that Deadpool 3 will kick off Phase 6 of the MCU, which begins with a “Fall 2024” release.

Originally published on September 27, 2022.

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One thing that MCU fans are always talking about is whether mutants will come to the MCU and which X-Men characters we’ll get to see in the universe if they do. Top of mind for many is the question of whether Wolverine will appear again on the big screen. And if Wolverine is destined for the MCU, who might play him. The character remains synonymous with Hugh Jackman for now, but it seems unlikely Jackman will reprise the role. Luckily though, fans have a whole lot of ideas, and rumors are everywhere.

Here are the actors currently rumored for the part, and those we think would thrive as MCU’s Wolverine.

Daniel Radcliffe

The Miracle Workers actor’s name has been tossed into the Wolverine mix for so many years, he recently weighed in. Radcliffe thinks his name often comes up where Wolverine is concerned because they share one major characteristic: they’re both short. But alas he is not Wolverine (yet). Wolverine is 5’3 in the comics and Radcliffe, an affable 5’5, is a credit to short people everywhere. The actor has largely eschewed giant franchises since his decade-long tenure as a famous boy wizard. But given his incredibly varied career, we think, should the MCU come calling, he’d fit right in as Wolverine.

Taron Egerton

Much like Radcliffe, in the years since Jackman bade Wolverine farewell, Egerton’s sat high on the list of potential replacements. Much like the Brits and Bond, it appears that every actor under 5’10 is in the running to play Wolverine. (Although, Jackman is a Tall Man so really it’s anyone’s game.) And like Radcliffe, Egerton—who is actually slightly taller at 5’9—doesn’t quite know how the rumors got started but is flattered anyway.

But it seems like these rumors might have actually started something. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Egerton shared, “I don’t think it would be wrong to say that,” with regards to him hoping to be cast as Wolverine. “I’d be excited but I’d be apprehensive as well because Hugh is so associated with the role that I’d wonder if it’d be very difficult for someone else to do it… But hopefully, if it does come around, they’ll give me a shot.” Although as Jackman’s former co-star, he won’t have to go too far to secure his blessing.

The publication also notes that he “has met with Marvel Studio executives, including the company’s president, Kevin Feige.” Very interesting.

Pablo Schreiber

This is a perplexing set of rumors considering Schreiber—an Extremely Tall Man—is currently quite busy with the Halo tv series. The actor plays Master Chief in the Paramount+ series, which scored a season two renewal before the show premiered. But Schreiber recently told The Playlist that he’s met with Marvel a few times about different projects. Including, as the Orange Is the New Black actor would have us believe, a certain short, Canadian mutant. And, of course, the Canadian actor was enthusiastic about the “dream casting” should he answer the MCU’s call to tackle Canada’s most iconic character. This is all to say it won’t come as a surprise if Schreiber pops up in the MCU one day. But whether he plays Wolverine or Arkon the Magnificent is anyone’s guess.

Steven Yeun

Steven Yeun is a very popular guy. So it’s not surprising that fans are clamoring to see him in the MCU. (The fan forums have cast him as everyone from Namor to Mr. Negative.) But what if the right Marvel role is just waiting to claw its way out. Since his devastating departure from The Walking Dead, he’s remained pretty busy, with films like Minari and the upcoming Jordan Peele movie Nope. Technically he’s already a fledgling superhero on the animated series Invincible. But if the likes of J.K. Simmons, Barry Keoghan, and Michael Keaton can flip flop between comic book universes, I don’t see the issue.

Gael Garcia Bernal

I know he’s already on tap to join the MCU in the upcoming Disney+ special Werewolf By Night but he would make an excellent Wolverine. (I would also accept his BFF Diego Luna, who is not on the list because he’s already busy with Star Wars and I am imposing a few years-long break between Disney-owned franchises.) He’s not tall, can frown like the rest of them, and has largely spent his career doing more lower key movies and shows. So if he’s throwing his hat into the MCU, I want him to go bold.

Nikesh Patel

Nikesh Patel is probably the most unknown actor on the list but I’d love this for him. A highlight in the messy but addicting Four Weddings and a Funeral Hulu TV series, he currently stars as Tom Kapoor an actor and main love interest in the delightful series Starstruck. Fun fact, in Starstruck season two his character signs on for a secret movie that shoots for eight months in Atlanta. Is series creator/star Rose Matafeo manifesting this for him? But in all seriousness, with so many giant movie stars circling the MCU, it would be fun to see a very solid, charming actor like Patel swoop in and nab the role.

Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves really wants to play Wolverine. And I think that’s a good enough reason to let him. In 2020, Reeves revealed he always wanted to play the clawed hero—unsurprisingly, he’s a popular guy among Canadian actors. But the Bill and Ted actor said he thought it was probably too late, although we disagree. Reeves has a reputation as one of the most thoughtful actors in Hollywood and he would definitely deliver a nuanced (if taller) take on the character. At the very least, Feige should give him a cameo as a multiversal Wolverine. Reeves—and the rest of us, for that matter—deserve that much.

Hugh Jackman

It’s interesting that Jackman is the cinematic iteration of the character considering he’s the BFG where Wolverine is concerned. He is, after all, 6’3—tall by any standards. But he’s played Wolverine in nine films across the X-Men franchise. The films themselves vary in excellence, but Jackman’s performance is quite good. But it seems fairly unlikely he’ll reprise his role as James “Logan” Howlett for anything longer than a cameo—if that. The actor bade the character farewell in 2017 with the extremely good Logan, and seemingly hung up the claws for good. But still, this is Marvel we’re talking about so never say never!

The post Which Actors Could Play the MCU’s Wolverine? appeared first on Nerdist.

Hugh Jackman’s allegedly hung up the claws f0r good, but it’s clear Wolverine is still a big part of him. So much so he paid an adorable tribute to the X-Men character on stage recently. The actor is currently on Broadway in The Music Man, where instead of the very specific mutton chops and claws, he flips between a suave derby hat and a marching band cap. But a fan recently brought a special accessory to the show and Jackman couldn’t help but show it off. For starters, I didn’t realize foam Wolverine claws exist, and now cannot wait to buy a pair. But it’s sweet how excited Jackman is to strike that classic Wolverine pose. Recently, the actor posted a video of this The Music Man meets Wolverine mashup to his Instagram story for us all to enjoy.

Both the audience and The Music Man‘s cast seems so utterly charmed by this whole interaction. It is the one—probably even Patti LuPone-approved–instance where using the phone in a theater is remotely acceptable.

The clip is short, so we don’t get to see the full exchange between the fan and Jackman. But the actor posts the crux of it: beckoning him to hand the foam claw over, showing off his spectacular pose, and joyfully tossing it back. But given how delightful the foam claw is, I’m sure just a brief wave at the end of the show was enough to capture Jackman’s attention.

The real question is, what if he performed The Music Man with the foam claw—just once! I’d even settle for a performance of “Ya Got Trouble.” I think the claws would add such a dynamic layer.

Still, though, it’s charming to see so much enthusiasm from Jackman. After all, he did play the iconic mutant in nine films—including two small cameos—over the course of 17ish years. So the Wolverine pose must be as second-nature as blinking at this point. Even if we don’t see him as our MCU Wolverine, at least the character is still very near and dear to Jackman’s heart. And now we feel ready for a full version of The Music Man, everything the same except it stars Wolverine.

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The experience of becoming a mother shortly after the loss of her grandfather sent her on the path of memory, and Reminiscence was born. “You know that baby smell they have when they’re babies?” she asks Nerdist. “And it’s so intoxicating, and it just does something primal to your heart? I can’t remember the smell now. I just remember how much I loved it, you know?”

Warner Bros.

Joy continues, “I knew details like that I don’t get to hold onto, and it pained me. But it also made me, despite how exhausted I was when I was nursing her at night, it made me pay attention. It made me, with all the brain cells I had available, try to lock in and appreciate those moments for what they were.”

Reminiscence is based on an original script Joy wrote a few years ago. The noir-style film takes place in the near future and is set in Miami. Global warming has impacted the world, both geologically and sociologically. Rising ocean waters have flooded seaside cities, like Miami, and temperatures have skyrocketed. People have learned to live during the nighttime and tuck themselves away during the day. 

Private investigator Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) owns a machine that he operates as a side business. That machine allows people to relive their memories as an escape from reality. Though cautioned by his colleague and friend, Watts (Thandiwe Newton), he becomes enamored with a new client, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). When Mae disappears, Nick risks everything, including his own memories, to discover what happened to her. 

Although she wrote the film years ago, the current pandemic has made Joy hold on to the power of memory even more. “Making this film kind of helped emotionally prepare me for the pandemic,” she says. “And it helped me process things that were happening. I’d already been really immersing myself in understanding life as this fleeting thing; we don’t have that much time. We never do, and we don’t know when it’s over.”

“Bannister talks about how time isn’t a one-way street anymore, with his machine. But for us, without that machine existing in real life, time is experienced as a one-way street. So with brief sojourns, brief hazy sojourns to the past, through memory, but you can’t really go back. You can’t really feel it fully again.”

She added, “The idea that these people, in all the complexity of their lives, would come together and try to make something with me, together, in this collective vision, that was a beautiful thing to me. And because some of Reminiscence‘s themes are about appreciating those moments, I really drank them in fully. And so, when I was locked away in quarantine along with everyone else, I would dip back into those moments. And they helped sustain me, as I think memory helps sustain a lot of people.” 

Warner Bros.

Aside from memory, one of the other major themes of Reminiscence is perception. Or at least how we’ve been trained to perceive women in a certain light. Joy believes that perception is a “gift.” She expands on that by saying, “It’s about seeing things and people for who they truly are. That is a gift that you can give and a gift that you can receive. Especially if you are a woman because it is so hard to be seen for what you are.”

“One day, you could wear a dress, you could be a certain age, and then revisit the same scene 20 years later in the same outfit. And people make all sorts of suppositions about you,” she notes. “You can’t help it. And you cannot turn off that gaze and the way that it pins you down. It’s a very difficult burden to live under. You’re constantly imagining the dance steps of the multiple partners surrounding you and how to navigate so you can be most true to yourself so that you don’t get stomped on and reduced to nothing because of a gaze that has nothing to do with you.”

Joy continues, “I think it’s something that every single woman absolutely understands and has to contend with regularly. A bunch of our brain space is dealt with just dodging and parrying these suppositions. That was very much something that I wanted to address.” Mae (Ferguson) bursts into Nick’s office in the film, seemingly looking for some lost keys. As the film moves forward, it not only makes Nick question what he thought he knew about his girlfriend, but it questions the audience as well. That is due not just to the script but how Joy worked with Ferguson to deliver that idea.

“When I talked to Rebecca about the role, we tackled that head-on. I said, ‘Look, you’re a femme fatale, and that’s a role, and that’s a trope. And you know that. Your character knows that, and you are using it as a tool, as a weapon. It has nothing to do, necessarily, with who you really are. That remains to be seen.’ But it’s so weird when you live in a world that has so many tropes and pre-existing notions about you. Sometimes the only way to weather it is to try to know that they’re going to look at you one way, which means maybe they won’t see you coming.”

The director and writer also feels that sci-fi is exactly where women belong. She says, “I think like a lot of women, you learn to experience life in both a subjective and an objective way, right? So if I’m walking down a street, if I’m walking down a dark alley at night, I’m walking in my body, and I’m also outside of my body, floating around, thinking about and positing about all the possibilities for danger.”

“I am my own alien, hovering around me, looking at things from outside the situation to keep me as a human safe,” she states. “And in some ways, it’s like being in a genre thing. My husband often says I’m like a robot sometimes. Because I’m trying to compute things while also living them. And I’m like, ‘Well, that’s what you have to do to survive as a woman. That’s how you have to maneuver in this society.’ So if genre, science fiction, and fantasy are about seeing things from an alien viewpoint, seeing things from a vantage point that is not wholly terrestrial in that sense, then who better than a woman to write it?”

Reminiscence is now playing in theaters and on HBOMax.

The post Lisa Joy on the Inspiration and Themes of REMINISCENCE appeared first on Nerdist.

And that includes an ineffective narration that plays less like a classic noir trope and more like a burdensome weight on the film’s far more effective visual storytelling.

Joy’s script has lots of big ideas. From how we use and often abuse our past to what we want from the future and each other. There are also the issues of climate change and income inequality. And border control and the police state. Oh, and don’t forget social commentary and more personal explorations of what it means to be alive.

If that sounds like a lot it’s because it is. And with so many ideas, some of the most compelling aspects of this world feel more like afterthoughts than significant elements. That’s particularly frustrating because some of them, especially the socioeconomic structure of this broken world, seem like a more interesting angle to explore this dystopian wetland rather than the story we get.

Those shortcomings wouldn’t matter as much if the film’s two most important aspects didn’t come up so short. The main plot is a traditional noir story. One day the beautiful Mae (Ferguson) upends the life of private investigator Nick Bannister (Jackman). He becomes obsessed with finding her after she unexpectedly disappears following a whirlwind romance. His quest to find her becomes an unhealthy obsession. One that leads him into a bigger story that has few (if any) surprises. Even if you don’t figure out the whole mystery before it’s fully revealed, its revelations won’t exactly surprise you. The film is too neat. Every piece is abundantly part of the puzzle.

Warner Bros. Pictures/Ben Rothstein

Considering how important nearly every minor character ends up being to the plot, it’s incredible how underdeveloped almost all of them are. This is a story about the three main stars, including Newton as Bannister’s friend and employee Watts, who are all better than the material they’re given. The dialogue isn’t bad. But with the exception of one or two scenes, it’s all forgettable the moment a character stops speaking.

Except for Jackman’s narration. It’s hard to forget because it’s so needless, overbearing, and immediately tiresome. The movie is at its best visually telling the story. And most of the exposition Jackman provides could easily be given with a single well-placed line. This is a movie, not a TV series. We don’t need to know as much about this world as we do.

When the film finds a nice groove, it’s immediately upended by the narration. Jackman’s voice and performance aren’t the problem. This isn’t Harrison Ford sandbagging Blade Runner‘s frivolous voiceover. The existence of the narration itself is the problem.

Warner Bros. Pictures/Ben Rothstein

The movie’s worst crime is not its underwhelming mystery. Nor its cumbersome narration or underdeveloped minor characters. (Or in the case of one fantastic character, their too short screen time.) The real crime is that in a world where people can watch memories and relive memories, Reminiscence has little to say about memories and the role they play in our lives. There’s nothing new or insightful here. Nor is there anything especially poignant save for one small speech. Living in the past is bad because you might forget to live now? Yeah, for sure. We don’t need a memory machine to know that.

The movie also underuses the machine itself. Too much of the story takes place in the present. Memories are mostly used the way a detective would use security footage. When it is finally used in a truly creative and meaningful way, it’s frustrating to realize what could have been happening all along. Joy created a superb premise, a literal memory machine, and developed an innovative way to film it. Then didn’t do much with it. It’s like buying a Ferrari and hiring the best driver in the world to chauffeur you around. Then having them go 15 miles per hour to drop you off three blocks from your house.

Warner Bros. Pictures/Ben Rothstein

Reminiscence isn’t a bad film. There’s too much going for it to be that. But it’s not a good one either. It ignores some of its most interesting ideas while not doing enough with its best ones. Considering its premise and cast, it could have deftly combined two great genres to make something unforgettable. Instead, the only thing Reminiscence will be remembered for is that it should have been a much better movie.

2.5/5

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter at @burgermike, and also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post REMINISCENCE Is a Forgettable Movie With a Memorable Premise appeared first on Nerdist.

River City and all its troubles are finally making their way to the Broadway stage once again. The Music Man, which made its original Broadway debut in 1957 followed by a 1962 film, is returning to Broadway with Hugh Jackman in the leading role. There have been a lot of details up in the air about this production after its delay due to the coronavirus pandemic. They include questions about the new producer after Scott Rudin’s exit following abuse allegations and when shows would begin. Now, those questions finally have answers.

First, a quick summary for those who aren’t familiar with the musical. The Music Man follows Professor Harold Hill (Jackman), a con man who comes to a small Iowa town to scheme against its residents. He scams his way into a job as the creator of a boys’ marching band with the intention of taking the money and running. Things are going well until Marian Paroo the librarian catches onto his schemes. (Sutton Foster will portray her alongside Jackman.) Of course, they fall in love because that’s how stories go, right?

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Music Man’s performances will kick off on February 10, 2022 at the Winter Garden Theatre. Tickets are back on sale right now.  (Preview performances will begin in December 2021.) Kate Horton will take the reins as executive producer with direction by Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks and choreography by Tony winner Warren Carlyle.

Of course, it’s still exciting to think about Jackman as the schemer Harold Hill. He will absolutely bring it with his star power and exceptional singing and dancing skills. We saw this display of greatness in The Greatest Showman. But here’s a video clip of Jackman rehearsing for The Music Man in case you need more proof.

He’s tappin’ and twirlin’ all over the room with delight. It is great preparation to spin a web of lies and deceit onstage. The Music Man is a fun drama and now people will get to experience this story once again.

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Imagine if you could relive your best memories. Not just remember them, but feel them on your skin. To breath the very same air from that long lost moment, and hear it echo in your ears just like the day it first happened—it’s a beautiful idea. But also one you could easily get lost in. That’s the danger facing the characters in Reminiscence. The film’s first full trailer shows the risk of spending too much time in a past that might not be what you remember. The movie’s director and all-star cast say it’s about much more than that, though. Nerdist joined them for a virtual event on Wednesday, where they said that Reminiscence is a sci-fi noir about how we see each other. And it’s all explored in a story full of mystery, lost love, and questions about who we really are.

“Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a private investigator of the mind, navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). A simple matter of lost and found becomes a dangerous obsession. As Bannister fights to find the truth about Mae’s disappearance, he uncovers a violent conspiracy, and must ultimately answer the question: how far would you go to hold on to the ones you love?”

While Reminiscence may be an action-thriller sci-fi noir, the idea came from a personal, intimate experience for writer-director Lisa Joy (Westworld). It all began with a very old photograph she found while cleaning out her late grandfather’s belongings. She discovered a picture of an unknown woman whom Joy’s grandfather had named his home after. He had never told his family about the mysterious woman. Joy said that photo made her reflect on the idea of truly reliving our past.

“It made me start to think about memory and our lives in general. And the moments that maybe pass by, and maybe disappear—they don’t stay with us, those connections necessarily—but that meant something, that changed us and touched us. And how nice it would be able to go back to these memories fully for a moment, to live that life and feel the way you felt when you experienced them,” she said.

Warner Bros. Pictures/Ben Rothstein

Joy wrote the script right after giving birth. (Which somehow sounds less stressful than when she was writing while “puking from morning sickness.”) During those late nights with a newborn, Joy realized she wanted to “bottle” those quiet “magical” times with her daughter. That made her realize “how much of life we value is in those small moments.” Having an infant also explains why the cast says Joy sang “Baby Shark” on set “all the time.”

Hopefully, none of us will one day have memories of living in a world like Reminiscence. It takes place in a flooded Miami; giant walls keep the city from total destruction. Almost all activity takes place at night because it’s too warm during the day. And many also carry the scars of a recent war that shapes their current worldview.

Joy intentionally avoided naming a specific year for the film’s setting… but it doesn’t look to be too far in the future. She wanted it to feel relatable and not “too distant.” The movie explores timeless themes about life, memory, and identity. But we should also see connections with our own world now, because as Joy says, “Science fiction is metaphor.”

Warner Bros. Pictures/Ben Rothstein

The movie’s sci-fi element comes from technology employed by Hugh Jackman‘s private investigator Nick Bannister and his colleague, Thandiwe Newton‘s Watts. Their clients hire the pair to search their memories with a highly-advanced machine developed by the military. But this tech isn’t a matter of looking through a biological filing cabinet. It allows people to fully relive their memories, not just see them. Others can watch them too, thanks to a new piece of real technology. The memories seen in the film come from a new on-set tech, rather than a green screen. Joy and the cast didn’t fully explain the technology, but Newton said it looked like “an art installation.’

The people of this world can fully re-experience what it was like to eat, smell, feel, and hear events from their past as though they are truly happening again. An option that is easy to get lost in, especially in a world that offers so little happiness today or tomorrow. But as Jackman points out, there’s a danger to “spending too much time in the past or the future.”

There may not have been a future where Joy directed her own script if not for Jackman. She said she only wanted to do it if he starred in the film. (To which Jackman joked that Brad Pitt turned down the role.) Joy knew Westworld’s Newton could play Watts, the “toughest lady who was,” a role that requires both “stoicism and heart.”

Warner Bros. Pictures/Ben Rothstein

Finding someone to play the film’s mysterious Mae, who Bannister falls in love with and then becomes determined to find, came with its own complications. Joy said it was like “casting five roles at once.” It required someone who “could do tragedy, who could seduce but also be vulnerable, be witty, and sing.” Which Joy said left one choice: Rebecca Ferguson.

When it comes to Mae, Joy says it’s a Rashomon situation. Everyone looks at her differently. That idea appealed to both Ferguson and Jackman. Ferguson wanted to play Mae because the film explores the question of “who you really are.” Jackman also cited the film’s exploration of whether “we ever really know anyone.” And since he’s the one who loved Mae and is obsessed with finding her, it’s his character who will explore Joy’s idea of seeing others through “the gaze of love” and what that means.

Warner Bros. Pictures

If you’re hoping for a character to hate, you may be disappointed. Daniel Wu’s Saint Joe is a crime kingpin, but Joy “didn’t want any of the villains to be villains.” The actor describes his character as “three-dimensional and human,” with his experiences from the war driving his actions.

Saint Joe could end up being a fan favorite. Joy “tweaked” the character “towards” Wu after casting him. And while he might be the movie’s baddie, he’s also funny. Joy also thinks Saint Joe might be the first “Chinese villain with a Southern accent,” which she calls an “organic home brew blend.” Sounds like a memorable bad guy.

Though who knows how we’ll remember him or the film? Fortunately we won’t need a high-tech machine to find out. We’ll be able to do that re-watch the movie whenever we want after Reminiscence comes to theaters and HBO Max on August 20.

The post Hugh Jackman Relives His Past in REMINISCENCE Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.

It was a weird day when Disney purchased Fox. The acquisition threw the status of a lot of films into question, including (maybe especially) Fox’s Marvel movies. Imagining Ryan Reynolds’ foul-mouthed take on Wade Wilson in the Disney realm seemed far-fetched. While Deadpool 3 is absolutely moving forward under the Disney umbrella and will become an R-rated MCU film, it could have been something else. Ryan Reynolds shared on Thursday afternoon that the pre-Disney Deadpool 3 would have been a road trip between Wolverine and Deadpool.

In other words, we could have had it all.

Hugh Jackman’s Logan alongside Reynolds’ Deadpool? It’s perfection. Jackman and Reynolds already have a long-running “feud” on social media. They regularly throw barbs at each other. We have no doubt that energy would translate well to their superhero counterparts. Imagine how many times Deadpool would have to stop for bathroom breaks and how perturbed Logan would be. And perhaps the best part of this cool as hell sounding film? Reynolds mentioned the story would have unfolded “Rashomon style.”

Named after Akira Kurosawa‘s 1950 film Rashomon, the Rashomon effect is all about the unreliable narrator. Viewers see an event from multiple, contradictory vantage points, and thus have no idea who is actually telling the truth. Watching Logan (whose last appearance was in 2017’s Logan) and Deadpool play something like that out? Yeah, it would have ruled.

Fox

We’re sure Deadpool 3 will be fun and full of the irreverence we love. However, we’ll have this might have been in the back of our heads.

Reynolds dropped this Deadpool bomb while posting about Bell Let’s Talk, a Canadian program that intends to break the silence and stigma around mental illness. However, many have criticized Bell, a telecommunications company, for making it more a marketing ploy than about mental health.

Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist and the author of The Jedi Mind, available now. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are back at it again. And why wouldn’t they be? The two stars know the one topic that transcends all political divides is that people like watching the two of them make fun of each other. The latest entry in their phony feud is more than just a good time, though. It’s for a good cause. They’re pitting their respective companies against one another, to see which product and performer fans really support. There won’t be any losers at the end, though, because part of the proceeds of “The Feud” will go to two great charities.

They’ve mocked each other, offered insincere apologies, and video-bombed the other. Now Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are going to put their money where there trash-talking mouths are. Well, actually it’s your money they’re putting up. They are teaming up with Sam’s Club in a battle for consumer loyalty. From now until December 20, customers can purchase Reynolds’ Aviation Gin and Jackman’s Laughing Man Coffee at the warehouse chain. Each bottle or bag of coffee will be counted as a vote for Team Ryan or Team Hugh.

You don’t have to be a Sam’s Club member to participate. You can also vote for your favorite online, where you’ll be entered into a contest where five winners will get to bring a guest to a virtual party with both the Jackman and Reynolds. As for the famous pair of fake enemies, they’re playing for bragging rights.

But something much more important is on the line, no matter who wins. Sam’s Club will donate an equal amount of proceeds from “The Feud” to both Jackman’s Laughing Man Foundation and the SickKids Foundation.

Aviation Gin

So while there are never really any losers when Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman pretend fight, this is one battle where there will be a whole lot of winners. And everyone can support that.

Featured Image: Aviation Gin

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The thing with actors is they are nothing more than professional liars. They make money by pretending to be people they aren’t. Usually that happens in front of a camera, but many also present a false image of who they are off-screen. Well, it’s time to call out two of the biggest frauds in Hollywood for who they really are, because at this point it’s clear that Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have been playing as all for fools. Oh, no, they’re still super, super nice people. It’s just that that their obviously fake “feud” isn’t even pretending to be real anymore. Not when Reynolds is narrating a coffee ad starring Jackman.

But at least it’s all for a good cause. Even if it does feature a particularly grumpy Jackman.

Reynolds performs the voiceover for a new Laughing Man Coffee ad that shows Hugh Jackman in a way we’ve never seen him before—being a jerk. The promo features the former Wolverine living an angry, isolated life in his apartment. From his loft he screams at both local kids and his own adorable dog.

Ryan Reynolds/Laughing Man Coffee

But the Greatest Showman we all know and love arrives when Jackman drinks his coffee. And that coffee is really the best part of this whole thing. As Reynolds wrote on his YouTube page, “Hugh Jackman founded Laughing Man coffee so he could give back 100% of his profits to the fair trade farmers who grow it—and also to make himself way less of an asshole. That coffee is actual magic.” Well mission accomplished on both ends.

The second best part of this commercial, though, is the bonus joke the Deadpool star got in because of this ad.

Ah, that’s the stuff. Because while this feud has always been fake, we still like to pretend it’s real.

Featured Image: Ryan Reynolds/Laughing Man Coffee

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Ryan Reynolds has done the unthinkable. After taking another unprovoked shot at his longtime “nemesis” and fellow Marvel superhero Hugh Jackman, the Deadpool star has done the one thing we never thought he would. He has actually apologized. No…no, wait. That’s not quite right. He sort of apologized. And not to Hugh Jackman, but to a Mr. Hugh JACKSON. Which makes us think Reynolds isn’t totally sorry about insulting Hugh and his dog.

20th Century

The latest chapter in Hollywood’s silliest “beef” (which we heard about at ComicBook.com) began when the Greatest Showman posted a video on Twitter of him dancing while holding his adorable French bulldog. Jackman’s dog didn’t seem to love being out on the dance floor, but he didn’t seem to hate it either. But Reynolds, who saw the video on Twitter, had a much big concern than whether the dog was enjoying himself. He responded to Jackman’s tweet by asking, “What kind of monster puts tap dancing shoes on a dog?”

As it’s abundantly clear from the video, the French bulldog was not, in fact, wearing shoes. (Though his little paws did make an amazing sound when he ran towards the camera after Jackman put him down on the floor.) A minute later Reynolds, now claiming to have actually watched the 14 second clip, replied to his own tweet with an apology that does not seem entirely sincere.

As of now, Jackson…er, Jackman has not yet publicly accepted Reynolds’ apology. Though we’re sure he appreciates everyone knowing the dog was not suffering in tap shoes and was “dressed normally.” We do have one idea for how Jackman should respond. He should give Reynolds exactly what he wants, and no we don’t mean another entry in their “feud.” Jackman should appear in Deadpool 3. It would basically neuter Reynolds’ ability to publicly shame him.

And then Jackman can finally focus on more important things than a dumb public prank war. Like dancing with his dog.

Featured Image: Ryan Reynolds

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Twenty years ago today, the most important comic book superhero movie ever made was released, when X-Men first hit theaters on July 14, 2000. Now, before you all blow your tops and start reminding me about epics like The Dark Knight or Avengers: Endgame, I said “most important,” and not “best.” X-Men earns this label because it was certainly the comic book movie that changed how the genre was perceived from that point on, and helped launch the current superhero movie Golden Age we live in.

The funny thing is, X-Men was a movie that almost nobody at the studio which released it believed in, and it barely made it into theaters in the summer of 2000 in the first place. Since then, it has accrued a complicated legacy due in part to multiple accusations of sexual abuse by director Bryan Singer, the man who was then championed for his unique ability to legitimize the superhero genre, but whose involvement now scars its legacy. But a lot of people contributed to the first X-Men becoming a success, and they will get their due just as much, or more, than Singer.

The Long Road to Xavier’s School

20th Century Fox

X-Men certainly wasn’t the first superhero movie blockbuster, as that’s an honor that goes to 1978’s Superman: The Movie. A decade later came another massive hit in the form of Tim Burton’s Batman. But both of those movies had the advantage of central characters that almost everyone on the planet had heard of. By the year 2000, X-Men had been the comic book industry’s biggest seller for over 20 years, with a hugely successful Saturday morning cartoon show to boot. But to most studio executives disconnected from nerd culture, X-Men was simply an unknown property.

20th Century Fox gained the film rights during the 1990s. But because of the fact that the property was something that most higher-ups at the studio had never heard of, they simply never paid it the attention that most comic book fans believed it deserved. The very first X-Men script was actually written in 1984, but it would be 17 years before the students of Charles Xavier’s School for the Gifted would get out of development hell and become movie stars. And when it finally happened, it was all mainly due to the tenacity of one woman.

Lauren Shuler Donner: Mutant Messiah

20th Century Fox

The true force of nature responsible for bringing the X-Men to the big screen with integrity was producer Lauren Shuler Donner. She came on board as a producer in 1994, right around the time Marvel Comics filed for bankruptcy. Knowing the comic book sales and the extreme popularity of the animated show, she spent the rest of the decade trying to get X-Men off the ground. She approached some of the biggest names in Hollywood to develop a film, among them James Cameron, Michael Chabon, and Joss Whedon. A lot of elements from all of their various drafts and outlines made into the final shooting script, which was ultimately credited to screenwriter David Hayter.

Fox and Donner ultimately went with director Bryan Singer, fresh off of the critically acclaimed The Usual Suspects. The production distinguished from other superhero ventures by approaching classically trained actors like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen to playing significant parts, namely Charles Xavier and Magneto. Up until this point, the film genre that had only brought in esteemed actors to ham it up in supporting roles. Think Jack Nicholson as the Joker, or  Marlon Brando reading cue cards for his Superman role of Jor-El.

The Mutant Revolution Begins

20th Century Fox

X-Men finally went into production in the fall of 1999, with a Christmas 2000 release date. But the studio heads at Fox were nervous about the film finding an audience and opted to shave the budget down to $75 million—even 20 years ago, that was a very low investment for a summer special effects blockbuster. To accomplish this, they removed several expensive effects-heavy characters, most notably Beast.

Meanwhile, the original Wolverine actor, Dougray Scott, was replaced at the last minute with film novice Hugh Jackman. On top of all that, Fox moved the release date up to summer, leaving everyone scrambling to finish the film in time for its release. In other words, everything about the production was setting it up for disaster. One can imagine the studio probably thought the movie would just wind up as a tax write-off.

But then, X-Men opened to decent reviews, positive audience scores, and went on to make $157 million domestic (about $266 million in today’s dollars). Hugh Jackman’s turn as Wolverine made him an instant movie star, and the movie proved that Marvel Comics-based movies could bring in serious box office. New Line Cinema’s Blade was a solid hit two years prior, and based on a Marvel comic too. And it took an unknown comics character and gave him big screen success. But Blade didn’t wear its comic book roots on its sleeve, and wasn’t quite the 4 quadrant PG-13 blockbuster that X-Men would become. If Blade could be considered the warning shot across the bow, then X-Men was the ballistic missile.

“We’re not what you think. Not all of us.”

20th Century Fox

So what exactly made X-Men click? Unlike Superman and Batman, there was almost zero camp or tongue-in-cheek humor to the film. The opening scenes take place in Auschwitz in 1944, the furthest audiences could imagine from Batman Forever’s neon Gotham City. It treated its world with complete seriousness, and hammered home the sociopolitical underpinnings of the original comic without pulling any punches.

But this was still a superhero movie. And thus, it needed to be fun to watch. A lot of the humor and warmth comes from Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who plays the part as sort of the eyes and ears of the audience. To him, names like “Cyclops” and “Magneto” are silly too. So when he rolls his eyes at the code names and the costumes, but ultimately embraces them anyway, it allows the audience to do the same.

20th Century Fox

Despite the team’s black leather costumes (a sore point with fans to this day), the characters and their interpersonal dynamics were largely lifted straight from the pages of writer Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men comics. The cast of Anna Paquin, James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn, Halle Berry, and the other actors mostly inhabited their characters well. Sure, heroes like Cyclops and Storm were sidelined in favor of Wolverine, but what we did see of them wasn’t off the mark from what fans knew. The overall concoction of the film worked, and left audiences hungry for more. And there came a lot more, as the series lasted for 19 years and 10 installments to date. (Twelve, if one counts Deadpool.)

The Legacy of X-Men

20th Century Fox

These days, X-Men reads more like a somewhat expensive pilot to a TV series, rather than the epic comic book movies we are used to today. The big climactic battle takes place in a gift shop, a far cry from an alien invasion of New York. But the characters of the film are so well defined and likable that we care what happens to them, even if the big finale fight is weak sauce. Once X-Men was a success at the box office, it was truly “game on” for the comic book/superhero genre outside of the big two of Superman and Batman.

There is one more key player in X-Men’s success who must get his proper credit. A first-time Associate Producer and lifelong comics fan named Kevin Feige was on the set of the original film, making sure that details from the original comics made it to the screen. It was he who, as legend has it, made sure Jackman’s hair matched the Wolverine of the comics, among other nods to the source material. He was able to parlay his success with the X-Men franchise, and carry the lessons he learned thereon, to ultimately lead Marvel Studios and give birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe—the most successful franchise in Hollywood history.

20th Century Fox

The influence of X-Men is enormous to this day. Because of its success, characters that were not household names to the average moviegoer were newly seen as viable properties; thus, we have the Iron Man and Ant-Man movies.

X-Men also was the first superhero movie since Donner’s Superman to inhabit a recognizably real world, in contrast to the heightened realities we saw in the Batman films or Dick Tracy. That is certainly something that influenced Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman and, again, the entire MCU going forward. When Ian McKellen managed to play a deadly serious adversary like Magneto while wearing a cape and a goofy helmet, it allowed for future “serious” actors like Alfred Molina and Josh Brolin to bring serious gravitas to, respectively, Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2 and Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. A generation earlier, villainous parts like these would have been played entirely for laughs.

X-Men may not be the best comic book film. (Heck, in my opinion, it’s not even close to being the best X-Men film.) But it’s remains an enjoyable 90-minute sci-fi blockbuster, and one that has more going on in its narrative than not only most comic book movies, but most big budget tentpoles, period. Soon, the X-Men franchise will be rebooted in the MCU. But with the original movie soon to be on Disney+, it’s as good a time as ever to revisit the movie that changed it all.

Featured Image: 20th Century Fox

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The Fox X-Men films have finally started to drop on Disney+, including 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. Fans wondered if the movie would make it to the streaming service uncensored. It has not only an f-bomb (uttered by one Charles Xavier) but also contains one of the franchise’s only brief moment of on-screen nudity. For just a couple of seconds, we see Hugh Jackman’s bare bottom, right after he transfers his mind into his younger body in the ’70s. Up until now, Disney+ has been stressing they are a “family friendly” service. That means showing nothing parents would feel uncomfortable letting their little ones see.

According to Variety however, Jackman’s well-toned rear end did not get edited out for the Disney+ version. Jackman even commented on this fact on Instagram (see above). The reason it’s surprising is because of change to a different movie earlier this year. Disney edited out actress Daryl Hannah’s bare bottom with digitally elongated hair in the movie Splash. That movie was PG, and not PG-13, but the briefest flash of skin as Hannah dives into the ocean was considered too racy for America’s children. Disney also edited two f-bombs out of Hamilton so it could get a PG-13 rating. That rating makes it Disney+ safe.

Twentieth Century Fox

So why did X-Men get a pass? It seems like an enormous double standard, as if saying female nudity is automatically sexual, but male nudity is not. Although a few people thought Jackman’s butt falls into “funny naked” and not “sexy naked.” (Note: Nerdist has reached out to Disney about this matter, but we have not received a statement). As for the f-bomb, it’s one of the few movies on the service to contain that particular swear word. Films can be PG-13 with a single instance of f**k, but Disney has gone out of their way to make sure the streaming service is “safe for kids.”

At least two other X-Men films have characters uttering the f-word, X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse. It would be funny if, at the end of the day, the nudity and swearing on the streaming service came from Marvel’s Merry Mutants. But even given all this, do not hold your breath for the R-rated Deadpool movies to show up on the streamer. Like, ever. That’s just a bridge too far. Even though Ryan Reynolds‘ joked “he’s excited for them to do the same for Deadpool. It’s time children knew.” We can’t imagine it will ever happen.

Featured Image: Twentieth Century Fox

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Due to everyone sheltering in place these past several months, we’ve had some unprecedented cast reunions via Zoom, ranging from Hannibal to The Lord of the Rings. And another one just got scratched off of our reunion wish list, as much of the original X-Men cast reunited for a good cause.

And then…a certain “Merc With The Mouth” actor crashed the party. And things got really good.

Sir Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Halle Berry (Storm), and Famke Janssen (Jean Grey) all got together virtually as part of the Global Goal fundraising effort. Sadly, fellow OG mutants Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden, and Anna Paquin could not attend. But in their place, this brief reunion yielded a few big surprises, including Ryan Reynolds. Yes, Deadpool was the “surprise” guest at this get-together. And his presence yielded predictably hilarious results.

He wasn’t the only surprise guest, either. The “junior” versions of Charles Xavier and Jean Grey, James McAvoy and Sophie Turner, dropped in to chat. Yes, the whole thing was totally staged for a good laugh, but that didn’t make it any less awesome to watch.

YouTube/Global Citizen

The whole reunion wound up being pretty short and sweet, and had all the actors gently poking fun at the X-Men films’ convoluted timelines. Not only that, but everyone got to pick on the runt of the X-Men franchise litter, better known as X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (Although is it even the black sheep of the family anymore? A few other X-films can sure give it a run for its money).

The X-Men cast members also got to crack wise about all the other big franchise reunions going on right now. Patrick Stewart joked about needing to run off to go to a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion, and we honestly hope that goes from joke to reality soon. They did one for Marina Sirtis’ birthday…can the fans get one now too?? Asking for a friend.

Featured Image: YouTube / Global Citizen

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This year marks the 20th anniversary of the original X-Men film. Though they’re not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they got the Marvel movie domination ball rolling. And that first X-Men movie is one of four films in the franchise coming to Disney+ this summer. The 2000 blockbuster arrives on the service on Friday, August 7th. X-Men: Days of Future Past drops July 10th, X-Men: Apocalypse on July 17th, and finally, The Wolverine lands on Sepember 4th. The 2005 Fantastic Four movie is also coming to the streaming service on August 28th.

Twentieth Century Fox

But that’s not the only Marvel action coming to Disney+ this summer. Ant-Man and the Wasp flies in on Friday, August 14th, making Disney’s MCU library almost complete. The only missing titles from the MCU at this point will be Sony’s two Spider-Man films, along with The Incredible Hulk. Universal distributed the latter.

Marvel Studios

It will be interesting to see how Disney incorporates the Fox Marvel films into their Marvel section on the service. Right now, they have the 2015 version of Fantastic Four sandwiched in between Avengers: Endgame and Iron Man in the interface. If they continue this formatting, it could lead to brand confusion. The average viewer might believe they are all MCU films. It might be a wiser move to have an MCU section, along with a separate Fox Marvel section. For that matter, how about putting the MCU films in chronological order?

Twentieth Century Fox

I am also curious to see if Disney+ censors these movies in any way. While the first X-Men doesn’t contain any nudity or f-bombs, X-Men: Apocalypse has one utterance of the f word by Magneto. Charles Xavier does the same in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Remember, Disney+ recently edited Daryl Hannah’s bare bottom in the PG-13 Splash to make it more family friendly. So don’t be surprised if you hear a bleep where that f-bomb was supposed to drop.

No word yet on when X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men: First Class will land on Disney+. It might be awhile before Dark Phoenix arrives since it’s currently on HBO Max. As for the profanity laced, uber-violent Deadpool movies, they should pop on the service on the first of Never at Zero o’clock.

Twentieth Century Fox

This summer is the perfect time to revisit many of these X-Men films. Of the four that are coming to Disney+, two are genuinely good, a second is pretty decent… and then there’s Apocalypse. But even that one has some fun Quicksilver moments. Days of Future Past in particular is a high water mark for the series, and it might have been best to leave the franchise at that end point. Before the inevitable MCU Mutant reboot, why not have an X-Men Disney+ marathon this summer?

Featured Image: Twentieth Century Fox

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It’s just a matter of time before the X-Men family of characters join the MCU. And ever since that became a possibility with the Disney/Fox merger, several fans have been hoping that Hugh Jackman could be coaxed out of his Wolverine retirement which he announced after the release of Logan. But according to a recent interview, it seems like Jackman has remained committed to leaving Logan’s claws on the shelf for good. And he is more than ready for someone else to take up the mantle.

Twentieth Century Fox

In an interview with The Daily Beast (via IGN), the former Oscar nominee talked about the Disney-Fox merger, and the possibility of bringing Wolvie into the world of the Avengers, saying “If seven years ago that had happened I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah!’ but I knew it was the right time for me to leave the party. Not just for me, but for the character. Somebody else will pick it up and run with it. It’s too good of a character not to.”

So that pretty much confirms that the next time we see Wolverine pop his claws on screen, it’ll be with a new actor taking. It was always far more likely that Kevin Feige would reboot the entire mutant mythology (except for maybe Deadpool) for Marvel Studios. It would certainly be far more difficult to integrate 20 years of pre-existing X-Men movie continuity into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it.

Marvel Comics

Having said all that however, we could easily see Feige give Jackman another MCU role down the line. Because if they ever do a big screen version of Secret Wars, we think that Jackman would be the perfect actor to portray the all-powerful Beyonder. And given that the first X-Men film started the ball rolling on Marvel movies in the 21st century in the first place, what better homage could there be than having Jackman in that groovy white leisure suit?

Featured Image: Twentieth Century Fox

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“You know, Tom rang me early on because we did Les Mis together” Jackman said. “And there were a couple of options there based on availability and time, and I really… yeah, I just wasn’t available at the time.”

20th Century Studios

So, just which singing and dancing kitty cat would Jackman have played? We have a hunch. Skimbleshanks is the only major cast member who wasn’t played by a “big name” actor, having been portrayed in the film by stage actor Steven McRae. Skimble  is canonically an older cat, and Jackman is in his 50s. Not to mention the fact that Jackman is a trained singer and dancer, so it makes sense that they probably wanted him for that part. Jackman did say “a couple of roles,” so it’s possible Hooper could have offered him another character as well.

Ever the gentleman, Jackman went on to say, “I’m in the theater, man, and I don’t want to be in the business of bashing people—or jumping on bandwagons. I haven’t seen it, and Tom Hooper’s one of the great filmmakers we have.” Truthfully, even if he had been in Cats, it’s highly doubtful it would have harmed his career much. It’s not like Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, or Idris Elba are in “actor jail” Jackman would have weathered the whole Cats storm just fine.

Featured Image: 20th Century Studios

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It’s pretty hard to be a movie fan and not love Hugh Jackman. He’s been in every genre, from comics books to fantasy to musicals, taking on characters like Wolverine and Van Helsing. Now, his new role in a true-crime drama will prove he’s one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood. HBO released the first teaser for its upcoming film Bad Education, which premieres April 25.

Jackman stars as Frank Tassone, the District Superintendent of the Roslyn, Long Island school district opposite Allison Janney’s Pam Gluckin, a former business administrator for the district. Tassone’s goal is to make the district’s test scores better to increase Ivy League acceptance and cause a positive ripple effect for the community. He succeeds in making the students successful and ranking among the best scores in America… but it all goes up in scandalous smoke.

The clip doesn’t give away too much information outside of Tassone’s basic goal and a quick glance at a few main characters. However, the peek does include a few glowing media reviews from its TIFF premiere. But it’s not hard to guess where this story will go because Frank Tassone is a real person. According to Vanity Fair, the charismatic leader joined the school district in the early ‘90s and won the hearts of parents and students alike.

Tassone indeed increased test scores and made the district a national standout but, in 2004, he was arrested for first-degree larceny to the tune of $11.2 million. The details of his double life began to spill out to the press, including his lies about being a widower, million-dollar vacations, a swanky Upper East side apartment, and a generally baller lifestyle despite issues with Roslyn High School’s infrastructure. Tassone was able to fund his lifestyle from tax payers, who were more than willing to pay up to ensure a great educational system.

It was also revealed that the district’s former business administrator Pam Gluckin took several million dollars to renovate her home in the Hamptons and purchase Jet Skis. The New York Times reports that her renovations sparked the entire downfall after a Home Depot clerk became suspicious of a purchase. The cashier called Roslyn officials after a man came into her Selden store to purchase construction materials for an address outside of the school district. The buyer, John McCormick, was Gluckin’s son.

via GIPHY

Long Island Press reported in 2010 that Frank Tassone and five others pleaded guilty in 2006 for stealing school district funds. Tassone was released the same year due to good behavior and is not involved in the making of Bad Education. Gluckin was released in May 2011 and went on to work for a non-profit organization in Queens. Interestingly, the screenplay was written by Mike Makowsky, a former Roslyn student who met Tassone when he was six.

Bad Education will certainly add some dramatic elements along the way, however, the real-life backstory itself has plenty of entertainment value. Any tale featuring a beloved figure with duplicitous ways, betrayal, and all-out scammery is due to be a wild ride. And, when you add Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney to lead the way, it pretty much becomes must-see TV for true crime fans.

Image Credit: Chris Chapman

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Hugh Jackman seems like a guy who has life figured out. He spent a decade as the face of a popular superhero franchise, playing one of the most iconic and beloved comic book characters ever. When he wasn’t busy stabbing bad guys with adamantium claws he was following his true passion by singing and dancing his way through big Hollywood musicals. Rather than rest on his laurels (or his giant piles of money, for that matter), he has been traveling the world this year with his very own live stage show. Yup, everything in Hugh Jackman’s life seems pretty good, save for one consistently annoying problem: Ryan Reynolds won’t leave him the hell alone.

The Deadpool star has made it his mission to troll Jackman anywhere and everywhere he goes until he agrees to play Wolverine once more alongside the Merc With a Mouth. But it’s not all bad, because Reynolds’ troll jobs are always funny, and sometimes even kind of sweet. For instacne, when he made a video drop-in during one of Jackman’s recent shows to sing Happy Birthday to Hugh.

Jackman brought his stage show The Man. The Music. The Show. to Indianapolis at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Saturday, October 12, which was also the X-Men star’s 51st birthday. At the end of a performance he made a joke about his frenemy, saying, “Let’s see Ryan Reynolds do that,” which he then followed up by telling the audience, “Please don’t post that last bit. Please just keep that between us.”

Not only did it not stay between them, it was right then that Ryan Reynolds appeared on the big screen above the stage. At first, Reynolds said he was hurt by those comments, but then he led the audience through a rendition of the Happy Birthday song (without any formal training) as Jackman’s crew came out on stage with cake.

Of course things got dirty at the end of the song; it’s Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. How else could it end but with vulgarities and someone getting flipped off?

While Reynolds posted his own version of the video, you can also see what it looked like from the audience.

 

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Hugh watching @vancityreynolds birthday message yesterday?❤️ THE ENDING KILLED ME? Seen on: @jackmansjoy #hughjackman #themanthemusictheshow #hj #hughjackmanfans #hughjackmanfan #hughjackmanwolverine #hughjackmanedits #ptbarnum #hughjackmantour2019 #thewolverine #loganhowlett #ptbarnum #thegreatestshowman #thegreatestshow #circus

A post shared by The Man The Music The Show ? (@themanthemusictheshow) on Oct 13, 2019 at 7:56am PDT

Look, we know there’s a non-zero chance this was not actually the surprise Jackman made it out to be. (Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t—we’re just saying Hugh Jackman is a talented actor who could definitely fake it.) But whether this was really an unexpected video drop-in or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was a lot of fun. Hollywood has plenty of real feuds and fake friendships that it’s cool to see two super popular actors can still find the time to make fun of one another like old friends.

It also helps that Ryan Reynolds is a pretty funny troll.

Featured Image: Ryan Reynolds

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When the film opens, you are immediately drawn to Tassone and Gluckin’s camaraderie. They run their district so smoothly, no one dares question how, but rather it is portrayed as a breath of fresh air. Tassone cares about his employees and students in a way that is, honestly, so refreshing to see. We rarely see admins care to the point of making personal house calls and going out of their way to make sure the students get into the best and brightest colleges. Tassone and Gluckin both work late, and go above and beyond to make the parents, students and staff feel supported, valued and empowered to be the best versions of themselves, no matter where they go.

Slowly this façade starts to fade as you watch Gluckin allow her family members to use a Roslyn-issued credit card for personal responsibilities such as, to buy supplies for her house remodel and Christmas gifts for her nephew. When family members initially inquire about the card, she always responds with ease that she’ll handle it and not to worry. In turn, she spends many nights altering documents and records to her advantage. Her son, not as smart as his mother, slips up and creates a domino effect when he fails to cover his tracks appropriately during a Home Depot shopping trip, and thus the bigger story unfolds.

When Gluckin goes down, her partnership with Tassone goes with it and no one holds back. Tassone works with the school system to get her a deal that seems fitting to him but mostly leaving her to take all the blame and carrying on as usual. And for a moment, you start to think she might be working alone until you see there’s more than meets the eye with Tassone. It is this pivotal turn of events where Janney and Jackman play off of each other incredibly well, showing the destruction of a partnership that the audience has grown to love and respect, giving us some of the best scenes of the film. 

In the epic uncovering, it isn’t just Gluckin’s son massive screw-up that bolsters this crime to the forefront, but also the impressive investigative journalism of a Roslyn High Student, Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan, Miracle Workers). A school newspaper assignment led to her uncovering millions of dollars of fraudulent purchases that brought down Roslyn staff, including Tassone. The film isn’t just good because of the insane plot that keeps you on your toes every moment of the film, but the film is good because Jackman presents Tassone a fully formed human being with narcissistic traits that give way to a broader and more complex character, whose personal and professional lines are so blurred, that he ends up poetically succumbing to the intricate web he’s woven.

The way he shifts his entire being to throw Gluckin and anyone else in his path, including a teenager, under the bus to save himself, makes you question the true mental state of Tassone. He moves so stealthily that other employees don’t even realize their engagement in the fraud and extortion due to neglect in their work and sometimes unintentional oversight. 

Bad Education, a story that I had not known prior to seeing the film, but researched thoroughly after, is so insane that I walked out of the theater questioning how all organized bodies spend the allotted dollars they are given. It shows just how easy it is to do the wrong things, how people will go to great lengths to cover their illegal activities, and how some people can delusionally believe that when it comes to financial corruption, the lines of right and wrong are not always black and white but sometimes a shade of grey.

The film shows how you never really know anyone fully, just the parts that they allow you to see. And as these individuals are ultimately convicted and do their stint in prison, you question whether a black or brown person who committed the same crime would’ve been granted the second chances and/or type of leniency that our characters and these real-life thieves were. So, if you haven’t read all about how a student helped bring moral deceit to light do so, and then follow that up by checking out the film and its stellar performances, when it debuts on HBO. 

4.5 out of 5

Header Image: HBO Films

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As someone who once spent an agonizing month ranking every song from The Greatest Showman from “least-best” to “best-best,” believe me I tell you I say this with nothing but love in my heart: you have to be a special kind of nerd to go see a Hugh Jackman concert where he sings a bunch of show tunes. (Coming to America this month!) But the type of person who would do that is also the type of person who would appreciate this!  The amazing surprise Jackman had for his audience while performing at the 02 Arena in London recently. He brought out another actor who has shown off his own musical chops on the big screen, the star of the Elton John biopic Rocketman, Taron Egerton, to sing one of Sir Elton’s greatest and most beloved hits, “Your Song.”

YouTube user Tara B shared this footage from the audience of the unexpected appearance. Jackman brought out the Rocketman star, who does all of his own singing in the film. Jackman and Egerton co-starred in 2015’s Eddie the Eagle and have remained friends. Egerton then led the crowd in a beautiful rendition of the iconic song.

On a personal note, “Your Song” is one of my all-time favorite tracks. The only way this could be better is if halfway through the song Hugh Jackman turned it into a duet. No, wait, even better would have been if Elton John himself had then surprised everyone, Jackman and Egerton included, by also coming out on stage. (John and Egerton have already done a live duet together.)

With Jackman about to kick off the U.S. leg of the tour, and with Rocketman in theaters right now, what better way to promote both endeavors than singing together? And think of how many of my fellow music-loving nerds it would make happy.

Featured Image: Tara B

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Through films like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, Oregon’s Laika Studios has led the charge to preserve stop-motion artistry, pushing forward decades-old techniques with technological advancements that simultaneously make the nuts-and-bolts process easier and challenge filmmakers to use it in innovative, dynamic new ways. Missing Link, Laika’s latest, is a wild, brightly-colored adventure that marks their most ambitious effort yet, featuring dozens of locations, a lead character whose plump, fur-covered design seems like an animator’s nightmare, and generally more detail, design, and color than they’ve ever attempted before.

In anticipation of the release of Missing Link on April 12, Nerdist visited Laika Studios, nestled just outside of Portland in Hillsboro, Oregon, for a look at these incredibly complex and time-consuming processes that produce such delightful characters and stories. Producer Arianne Sutner and director Chris Butler started the tour by offering some background detail about their inspirations for the film, and its place in Laika’s growing library of projects. “This is definitely the most ambitious thing we’ve done,” Butler told reporters. “We say that every time, but every time it’s true.”

Missing Link is “brighter” than other Laika films

“We always talk about it as being a kaleidoscopic travelogue,” Butler said of the film, which he also wrote. “I wanted to do kind of like an Indiana Jones, but for stop motion. So it’s a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Sherlock Holmes, a little bit Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and a little bit Around The World in 80 Days. It’s this big, epic, colorful adventure. So we wanted to give you a sense of how that looks in terms of the scale. We travel halfway around the globe in this movie, and it’s a quite an impressive feat.”

Laika’s films have always skewed slightly darker than many of their animated competitors, exploring sadness, fear, and loss in a way that’s accessible to children but relatable to adults. That said, Sutner and Butler acknowledged this film is a bit sunnier than its predecessors. “Is it subversive? Yeah, I think there’s a strong element that runs through this movie,” Sutner said. “But on the face of it, it’s lighter and brighter.”

“It’s more playful for sure,” agreed Butler. “More accessible. But there’s still elements of irreverence in it, because I can’t help myself.” Sutner suggested that the expansion of locales for the story and the evolution of their techniques to incorporate more computer-generated “enhancements” of stop-motion techniques both enabled and forced that tonal shift. “Before, you were confined by the three walls or even four walls. But now we’ve been working so closely with our visual effects team and the CG side. Every shot is an old-fashioned visual effect here, but they’re able to work closely with us and kind of expand our world. And we’ve been doing that successfully.”

The costumes needed to be “indestructible”

In a room adorned with sketches, fabric swatches, vintage photographs and other reference material, costume designer Deborah Cook detailed the almost 18-month process of coming up with the outfits that each character wears in the film, combining historical and even geographic accuracy with the filmmakers’ idiosyncratic impulses. “We looked at these as a way of being able to express these concepts in the costume, which also leads into the bigger landscape of the movie,” Cook said. “You can really get a flavor of that strong, dynamic silhouette, and then this is a regional pattern which gives us a texture that we knew we could bring down into our scale and would be representative of that era.”

Cook said that in addition to being small-scale, puppet costumes must be made from different materials like silicone to accommodate the needs of the filmmaking team, whose members spend hundreds of hours moving and manipulating the characters into position on set. “If the puppets are standing in a position where their elbow might be bent or their knee might be bent over a course of time, when they come out that position we need the costume to return to its original shape,” she said. “This makes it very controllable for us.”

“They really do have to be that indestructible, because they’re going to have to last for several years,” she continued. “They get handled way more than normal clothing every day. They get handled by maintenance teams, riggers, animators, into their promotional life where they’re on display.”

The title character’s design was the “worst case scenario”

Cook indicated they use a variety of printing and stitching processes to create the right look for each costume, but seldom if ever buy anything off the shelf. “We custom make everything here as much we can because it makes us more self sufficient,” she said. “We can reproduce them as much as we want in any different scale and add in the animatable qualities we need as well rather than adapt to something that may not be available in six months time. Or, they might change manufacturers so they’ll look the same to the human eye if you’re making a life-size costume, but not on our scale.”

Unsurprisingly, puppet fabrication is one of, if not the most important part of Laika’s creative process. Creative lead John Craney explained that their 20,000 feet of the studio’s 130,000 foot space is dedicated exclusively to this department. “We maxed out at 86 fabricators for Missing Link, but the department is a smorgasbord of über-talented individuals from many different disciplines,” Craney revealed. “We have illustrators, jewelers, engineers, textile experts, hairdressers, people with pottery and ceramics backgrounds and a smattering of art school rejects that kind of reinforced the personality of the department.”

Craney indicated that the design of Link (Zach Galifianakis), the film’s hirsute main character, was essentially an encapsulation of the biggest and most unwanted challenges an animator might ever face on a project like this one. “If I asked, what’s the worst case scenario when building a character, a large, husky character covered in fur and hair over a foot tall would be it. So he was quite a challenge from the get go,” Craney said. Starting from the script, director Chris Butler works with concept sculptors to create 2D designs, and eventually maquettes. After a tremendous number of revisions and refinements, another part of that team is tasked with figuring out how that design can move, and eventually, express emotion.

“Our brief really is to create a tool for the animation department so that they can bring through a performance and the personality of the character,” Craney said. “To take a hero puppet from paper to stage in development is about nine months. That might seem extraordinary, but there’s over 250 considered components just in the armature, [which] is the foundation for performance and it’s really our starting point.”

The team came up with a whole new way of designing fur

The evolution of stop motion puppetry has a long and complex history, and Laika continues to be on the forefront of its changes and improvements, adding extra parts and devices to their characters—especially under their polished surfaces—that in some cases literally breathe life into them. “A big note on this film and going forward at Laika was that we want to bring that performance from within—let characters take a breath, or to breathe, so we were building in breathers,” Craney said. “And then we needed to deal with Link’s robust tummy, so we built in what we call a belly mover—girth control. It really accentuated that weight and that balance, and it gave him a lot of visual integrity.”

Perhaps the most amazing part of this process (to a layperson, anyway) is the creation of Link’s fur, which was undertaken in a different way than has often been done in the past. Where creatures and characters as far back as 1933’s King Kong featured hair that was virtually impossible to fully control, leading to a result called “boil and crawl” where the surface appears to dance thanks to natural contact between the animator and puppet, Laika’s determination to maintain a consistent surface—a “fur continuity” of sorts—led them to design and build their title character using a completely different technique.

“He’s mainly silicon, but we did want to give him some depth and we wanted his fur line to break without that scatter, so we came up with this beautiful cowl that you can see has this fur feel,” Craney said. “It’s a really a cool piece of sort engineering – each of these [tufts of “hair”] are fur tiles. I think there’s about 200 to 300, all individually hand placed, attached to a piece of leather. And then we have this foam insert that’s a little bit like a foam Slinky that makes it glide.”

Brian Mclean, Laika’s Head of Rapid Prototyping, further detailed how leaps in technology have facilitated better, more vivid, and more expressive animation from one film to the next. “We started this crazy process with an idea we had back on Coraline to take this age-old technique of replacement animation and fuse it with 21st century 3D printers,” Mclean explained. “Replacement animation is a technique where you essentially have a sculpt of an expression and then you’re photographing it and you’re popping that off and replacing it with a slightly different expression. [Nightmare Before Christmas’] Jack Skellington is a perfect example of replacement animation, and he had something like 800 hand-sculpted faces that were used in filming. So our idea back on Coraline back in 2006 was to take this technique and animate the faces in the computer, get really detailed performances and then send that computer file to a 3D printer.”

Although the printers helped tremendously to create the sometimes seemingly microscopic nuances needed to create a character’s full range of expression, they had drawbacks. “Coraline was beautiful and we broke a lot of ground pioneering this technique, but her face is came out in a single color of white resin – so we had to go in and hand paint each one of her facial expressions,” Mclean recalled. “It’s very laborious, and it was really limiting in the character design.”

The puppets had distinct faces for every single scene in the movie

Working with some neighboring tech companies, their studio effectively became a testing ground for using different kinds of printers and printing onto different kinds of materials that would allow the filmmakers to print or inject tiny drops of color into the molds, creating faces that already had the coloring needed to be camera-ready. Additionally, they would build each face in pieces, attached to the puppets via a complex system of magnets, that would allow them to swap one out for another during shooting without disturbing the rest of the scene or the position of the character. And finally, they built eyeballs separately, popped in and out via X-Acto knives, to have full but efficient control of as many aspects of each character’s expressions as possible. The end result is not just a much more effective production pipeline – albeit, he noted, not necessarily a cheaper one – but characters that act and react with much more verisimilitude.

“For this movie we printed over 106,000 faces, and on Coraline, to give you guys a comparison, we printed for that whole movie about 20,000 faces. But we didn’t just print faces willy nilly,” Mclean insisted. “It was all about really baking in really detailed character performances. This is the first movie in Laika’s history that we’ve been able to customize every single scene in the film from a facial animation standpoint.”

But those weren’t the only details they were able to bring to life with an accuracy and resonance unlike any even they had accomplished before. Discussing the challenges of “close-ups” and cutaways, shots typically excised from animated filmmaking due to their complexity, Head of Rigging Ollie Jones showcased a handful of large-scale displays used on Missing Link, including one of Link’s jawline (shot from within as a character examines his teeth), and another where his tail pops out of the butt of his tailored suit. As with the puppets, Jones and his team use sophisticated rigs to, say, open and close Link’s mouth, to manipulate his hanging tonsils, and generally maintain the illusion that the point of view is of a creature or character that’s the same size as in wider or full-body shots.

Afterward, production designer Nelson Lowry provided a tour of sets used on the film, including a train station, the forest setting where Link is first discovered by Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman), Link’s literature-filled cave, a room outside Adelina’s (Zoe Saldana) study where floor tiles and bottled-glass windows cast beautiful, lifelike shadows on miniature potted foliage, an old frontier town where Link and his companions’ horses trudge through mud, and a marble-clad room where a fireplace rages and a servant hovers expectantly in the corner. In many cases, both exteriors and interior are created for the sets so they’re able to be moved and manipulated to accommodate the characters. Like with the costumes and characters themselves, the sets were designed and engineered to match the real-life locales they are effectively fictionalizing, with the intention of being respectful and sensitive to the cultures and individuals who live there and are part of them.

Though most of the sets had been dismantled or stricken after shooting, there were a handful that still featured lighting and character rigs that would help animators manipulate Link and his friends, provide them with overall and key lights, and support other little details that would later seem to move or exist on their own after the filmmakers erased the latticework of metal rods with CGI. Visual Effects Supervisor Steve Emerson would later show us a “sizzle reel” of footage from the film where computers were used to clean up, augment and amplify the incredible handmade design work on each set to create a tangible, interconnected series of locations where snow falls, wind blows, mud flies, oceans rage and other sorts of environment effects exert an influence on the characters and story.

Missing Link takes its characters to so many recognizable places

“The idea was, let’s tell the stories that we want to tell without limitations,” Emerson said. “Let’s leverage technology in order to do that, but if we’re going to be integrating digital elements into these films, we want to make sure that we do so in a way that’s very carefully done and ultimately respectful of the art of stop motion animation. And really what that comes down to is it’s all about collaboration. So if we’re making a background character that’s going to go into a shot, the visual effects team is working very, very closely with puppet department. They’re guiding us in terms of materials and design, and they are reviewing our efforts. It’s a very, very intensely collaborative process.

Emerson reiterated that the scope of Missing Link was bigger than any of Laika’s previous films, and quite possibly bigger than almost any animated film ever made. “We’re on a worldwide adventure throughout Earth. We start in London and then we go to the Pacific Northwest. We go to Santa Fe, California. We cross America. We go to New York and across the Atlantic Ocean, where we end up in France. We go across Switzerland, through India, to the base of the Himalayas. We climb the Himalayas and finally make it to the magical valley of Shangri La.”

“Needless to say, if you have a background character in particular costume carrying a prop in India, it’s not going to work in the Pacific northwest,” he observed. “So what this meant was many more props, more background characters, more wardrobe. And we were making sure that we were being respectful of all of these different cultures as we’re building a lot more stuff—and plenty of it was going to end up being digital.”

Missing Link is very much its own beast

Watching the end result on the screen, there’s an absolute deluge of information and effort that never gets seen by viewers; not only do they not know about the sometimes multi-year process of simply designing the characters and figuring out how to effectively animate them, but they never see the thousands of man-hours that go into building sets from the ground up, populating them with props and decorations and eventually, characters, and then moving those characters several thousand times in just the slightest ways to make their movements and behavior seem smooth and believable. The sets, now taken apart and empty, loom over the characters’ heads as if hundreds of feet high rather than just a few inches. The atmosphere created through lighting and cinematography feels like true movie magic, transforming this tiny, meticulous work into believable spaces where puppets become flesh-and-blood people.

Stumping for the company she’s been a part of now for more than a decade, producer Arianne Sutner acknowledged that Laika is standing on the shoulders of giants, but aims to reach new and previously unimaginable heights—the thing the sets them apart, even more than their techniques, in an increasingly crowded moviemaking landscape. “I’m so proud of the place that we have. I mean, what am I going to say?” Sutner laughed. “But it is so important that we are here. We are doing very personal movies, and I think nobody else is doing exactly what we’re doing so well.”

“What I’m so proud of is that what you’re seeing doesn’t look or feel like another movie, including our own,” Sutner said. “On every movie we want to do something different than the last. I think we have a unique identity and we are competing with all of those other movies, tent pole movies too, so it’s kind of a tough world out there. But we give it our all, and we make, I think, these little perfect gems of movies.”

The post Exploring the Magical World of MISSING LINK at Laika Studios appeared first on Nerdist.

Logan was a beautiful and haunting way for Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart to say goodbye to Wolverine and Charles Xavier after more than 16 years in the roles. However, it turns out their final film as the famed X-Men didn’t just mark the end of an era, it marked the end of their record-setting run as live-action Marvel superheroes. If that sounds like a very specific record, the kind no one was even aware was a something you could break, take it up with the Guinness World Records, because it put both actors in.

Jackman was a guest on the British daytime show This Morning when he was asked about his childhood dream of being inducted into the Guinness World Records with his brother. Their plan to play the longest continuous game of badminton didn’t exactly pan out the way they hoped, but without even realizing it Jackman did set one for playing Wolverine between July 14, 2000, when the first X-Men movie came out, and March 3, 2017, when Logan hit theaters.

Every surprise should include confetti.

Since Patrick Stewart also starred as Professor X in both of those films alongside Jackman, he also set the record and earned himself a plaque as well. 

Welcome to the family, @RealHughJackman. Congratulations on your record-breaking @Marvel career as Wolverine. pic.twitter.com/p59RjWxQT1

— GuinnessWorldRecords (@GWR) February 20, 2019

Shouldn’t Patrick Stewart already be in the Guinness World Record book for being the best human alive?

Of course, now that we know this record officially exists, we’re thinking about who could break it. With the MCU as strong as ever, there’s no reason to think it won’t still be around long enough for someone to outlast them. The question is which superhero will be around that long? Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. look to both be on their way out in Endgame. But what about Scarlett Johanson, who first appeared as Black Widow in 2010’s Iron Man 2? That would require her to still be playing the part into 2027, which somehow sounds impossible. When you think about it like that, it makes Jackman and Stewart’s run even more incredible.

Forget thinking this is a silly record to hold. We think they should have been given bigger plaques.

Featured Image: Fox

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Ever since Disney acquired Fox, Marvel fans have been waiting to find out when Wolverine and the other X-Men characters would join the MCU and we may have an answer! Jessica has the x-tra details on today’s Nerdist News!

Are you ready for the uncanny mutants to join the MCU? Let us know in the comments below!

The post New Details on How Wolverine & the X-Men Will Join the MCU (Nerdist News w/ Jessica Chobot) appeared first on Nerdist.

There was a lot of skepticism about The Greatest Showman before it premiered last December. When movie musicals miss, they really miss, and it seemed crazy Hugh Jackman was following up Logan by starring in the second musical about P.T. Barnum Wasn’t one musical about the infamous showbiz legend more than enough for the rest of history?IT WAS NOT. Even if critics didn’t love The Greatest Showman, audiences certainly (and rightfully) did. A big part of the reason why is the film’s amazing soundtrack from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, which has hit number one on 14 different charts around the world. It’s been an unstoppable force for a year, going double platinum in the U.S., where it hit number one and has spent 50 weeks on the Billboard charts. It’s still in the U.S. top 20 albums a year after the film’s release, while at the same time its new Reimagined album featuring covers from various artists is in the top three. It also hit quadruple platinum in the UK, where it has been a phenomenon and is still in the top five a year later.

Accurately referred to as the song where Hugh Jackman seduces Zac Efron, this fast-paced verbal joust is so much fun it gives both characters enough adrenaline to do 800 shots of whisky without dying. (Please do not try to match how much they “drink” during it. You will not survive.) It might be the most lyrically impressive song in the film, and it’s impossibly catchy and infinitely re-listenable (we know, we’re halfway to infinite listenings). If at any point for the rest of your life you hear someone say “right here, right now” you’re going to sing the entire song, which is fine because you’re going to be doing that anyway. This is a perfect song, and a great choice to represent the best of the soundtrack.Should it really be number one? Yes, but so should six other songs, which is why we both love and hate this list. We got to write about an album we love, which involved talking about it a lot and listening to it even more. But in an effort to honor the soundtrack we tortured ourselves with a seven-way Sophie’s Choice. It’s like we went to Solomon and he split the baby seven ways.But now that we’re done, we can just enjoy all of The Greatest Showman!

Featured Image: 20th Century Fox

The post Every THE GREATEST SHOWMAN Song Ranked appeared first on Nerdist.

There was a lot of skepticism about The Greatest Showman before it premiered last December. When movie musicals miss, they really miss, and it seemed crazy Hugh Jackman was following up Logan by starring in the second musical about P.T. Barnum Wasn’t one musical about the infamous showbiz legend more than enough for the rest of history?IT WAS NOT. Even if critics didn’t love The Greatest Showman, audiences certainly (and rightfully) did. A big part of the reason why is the film’s amazing soundtrack from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, which has hit number one on 14 different charts around the world. It’s been an unstoppable force for a year, going double platinum in the U.S., where it hit number one and has spent 50 weeks on the Billboard charts. It’s still in the U.S. top 20 albums a year after the film’s release, while at the same time its new Reimagined album featuring covers from various artists is in the top three. It also hit quadruple platinum in the UK, where it has been a phenomenon and is still in the top five a year later.

Accurately referred to as the song where Hugh Jackman seduces Zac Efron, this fast-paced verbal joust is so much fun it gives both characters enough adrenaline to do 800 shots of whisky without dying. (Please do not try to match how much they “drink” during it. You will not survive.) It might be the most lyrically impressive song in the film, and it’s impossibly catchy and infinitely re-listenable (we know, we’re halfway to infinite listenings). If at any point for the rest of your life you hear someone say “right here, right now” you’re going to sing the entire song, which is fine because you’re going to be doing that anyway. This is a perfect song, and a great choice to represent the best of the soundtrack.Should it really be number one? Yes, but so should six other songs, which is why we both love and hate this list. We got to write about an album we love, which involved talking about it a lot and listening to it even more. But in an effort to honor the soundtrack we tortured ourselves with a seven-way Sophie’s Choice. It’s like we went to Solomon and he split the baby seven ways.But now that we’re done, we can just enjoy all of The Greatest Showman!

Featured Image: 20th Century Fox

The post Every THE GREATEST SHOWMAN Song Ranked appeared first on Nerdist.

Laika has been redefining our expectations of stop motion animation since the stunning Coraline, continuing to surprise and entertain us with lovely films like Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and the ultimately spoopy ParaNorman. Well, the director of that cute kids horror flick is back with the studio’s newest movie, Missing Link, a sprawling fantasy focused around the legend of the Yeti. Today Laika released the trailer for the gorgeous film which director Chris Butler describes as “so ambitious in its scope and scale.”

Missing Link looks to be an epic adventure which will once again delve into the weird and wonderful world of the mysterious. “I think the supernatural world is filled with so many cool stories that you can tell. As a lonely little kid who loved to draw and write, that was a world I loved to escape into. ParaNorman was one side of that, but there’s also the kind of creature side, the Harryhausen-esque mythical creature side and so I very much wanted to do something with that,” Butler told us.The film centers around Mr. Link—voiced by Zach Galifianakis—a hairy and enigmatic creature who lives alone in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest and whom Butler describes as “the beating heart of the movie.” The trailer introduces us to a story about finding your place in the world and a monster who just wants to find others like himself. “He wants to find a family, and he realizes that the person most likely to help him on this quest is this adventurer Lionel–voiced by Hugh Jackman–so he invites him to the Pacific Northwest where he asks him to take on this challenge of finding his long lost relatives.”When we chatted to Butler he mentioned that he saw the film as a “really vibrant, kaleidoscopic travelog” which the trailer definitely showcases as the characters journey across the globe. Butler saw the project as a chance to pay homage to one of his all time favorite films, Raiders of the Lost Arc, as well as celebrating the brilliance of one of the stop motion greats, Ray Harryhausen. It was also a way for him to explore the sweeter side of the supernatural stuff he loves so much. “For me, the creature feature side of things is very different because it’s not so much about playing in the shadows, it’s more about swashbuckling adventure. I basically wanted to do an Indiana Jones movie for kids in stop motion!”This fun-packed first trailer looks like Butler is well on his way to achieving that wish, and we’re really excited to see the vast story unfold when the film is released on April 12th next year!

The post Laika’s Bigfoot Movie MISSING LINK Drops First Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.

We may never see a full-on Wolverine and Deadpool movie with the original big-screen actors, since Disney is likely to reboot one or both within the next couple of years. Fortunately, we’re basically getting one in real life that seems to play out indefinitely, as Ryan Reynolds just can’t get Hugh Jackman out of his head. But even as the real-life Wade Wilson continues to direct his deadly mutant snark at Australia’s greatest superhero showman, the Wolverine gives back as good as he gets.The latest shot across Logan’s bow is a response to Jackman’s newest political drama, The Front Runner. In the spirit of a campaign, Reynolds has made a fake negative ad that impugns the star’s credibility and encourages all Academy members to vote for Deadpool instead…though it ultimately insists they should see The Front Runner anyway.

How well do you really know @RealHughJackman? pic.twitter.com/cV0W7C4LE3

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) November 2, 2018

Jackman’s rebuttal was to take the high road — literally — and bring his dog along with him to, ahem, make a statement. Actions speaking louder than words, and all that.

HIGH ROAD. @VancityReynolds pic.twitter.com/F0QJKXxIzJ

— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) November 2, 2018

We know it’s probably not up to Fox any more, but can’t we just let them fight on the big screen? It’s clearly what they want, and after all this build-up, it just won’t be the same with newer, younger actors.Would you vote for a Jackman/Reynolds Deadpool vs. Wolverine film? Comment below and let everyone know.

Image: 20th Century Fox

The post Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman Do Social Media “Battle” Again appeared first on Nerdist.

The first time I heard the name Gary Hart–the former Democratic senator from Colorado whose 1988 bid for his party’s nomination for president was completely upended by an extramarital affair–was in a history of journalism class.

It marked a major turning point in how the mainstream media reported on the private lives of politicians, and yet most Americans under the age of 40 likely have no idea how monumental his failed candidacy really was in changing the entire face of journalism. But the first trailer for The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman as the disgraced politician shows we’re all about to get a lesson on the campaign that changed how our leaders are covered.

Directed by Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno), the movie is an adaptation of the 2014 book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. The trailer touches on the major moments of Hart’s candidacy, which began with him as the best bet to be the Democratic nominee for president before it was discovered he was having an affair.

To think, there was a time in American history when a politician’s career could be ended because he lied about an affair…

Maybe in 30 years a whole new generation will need another political movie to explain when things changed like they did when Gary Hart turned major newspapers into tabloids.

The Front Runner arrives in theaters–when else–this November 7th.

How much did you know about this story? Are you excited to learn more about Gary Hart’s failed candidacy? We nominate you to share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Featured Image: Columbia Pictures

The post The Trailer for THE FRONT RUNNER Looks Like Hugh Jackman’s Oscar Reel appeared first on Nerdist.

X-Men Dark Phoenix and New Mutants both pushed back their releases, which immediately worried fans, but could Deadpool be the reason? Amy has the reshoot details on today’s Nerdist News!

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UPDATE 1-28-18: The not so real Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home has added not only Chris Hemsworth, but also Hugh Jackman. The actor shared the below clip on Twitter:https://twitter.com/RealHughJackman/status/957249142648180737Who else will make cameos in this tourism campaign? Fingers crossed for Cate Blanchett.And we also have a new clip showing McBride trying to get in touch with his wild side:https://twitter.com/DundeeMovie/status/956984708268773376UPDATE 1-24-18: The Brisbane Times (via Collider) reports that sources are saying this is for an Australia tourism campaign to kick off during the Super Bowl. Citing unnamed insiders, the presence of Chris Hemsworth (who’s a tourism ambassador in addition to those movies he stars in) and commercial director Steve Rogers (Hemsworth can’t stay away from guys with that name, apparently), and the fact that Tourism Australia and Screen Australia decline to comment at all, they’ve deduced it’s most likely not a feature film.Too bad. It was shaping up to at least be better than the last movie.

No, it is not a Funny or Die sketch; People magazine broke the news, and Rimfire is the real production company behind the previous films. This is actually Danny McBride as Brian Dundee in Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home. And for those of you doing the age math, no, this is not the son from Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, whose name was Mikey and who was played by an actor much younger than Danny McBride. This is Mick Dundee’s illegitimate, previously unknown son, and yes, Paul Hogan is back, though the plot synopsis makes it sound like he’ll be pulling Mark-Hamill-in-The-Force-Awakens duty.Per the official site: “Crocodile Dundee is back. Well, actually, he’s missing in the Outback. And the only person who might be able to find him is the loudmouthed American son no-one knew he had. Introducing Danny McBride as Brian Dundee. This son of a legend is forced to channel his Aussie roots as he embarks on the ultimate adventure in the land down under. It’s time to live up to the family name.”McBride and Hogan aren’t quite as odd a pairing as they may seem. Though Mick Dundee was a man of action, Hogan himself was a popular sketch comedian on Australian TV, with a show McBride would have fit right into. Curiously, he’s doing neither a fake Australian accent nor his trademark Appalachian twang, but a nervous-sounding “city boy” voice.So if this is like The Force Awakens, does that mean the next installment will have angry, anti-social Crocodile Dundee? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…but feel free to speculate on future franchise installments in comments below!

Images: Rimfire Films

You want movie news? We got it!

• Here’s a red-band trailer for Super Troopers 2.
• A movie made entirely from Russian dashboard camera footage is pretty great.
• And speaking of The Last Jedi, here’s proof that one controversial plot point was already canon.

The post Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth Join in the DUNDEE Fun appeared first on Nerdist.

We’d like to think we’re not so naïve as to expect that a movie like The Greatest Showman should by definition deliver on its titular promise. But tucked tightly in the boroughs of our brain that cause us to gasp at magic shows, play the lotto, and keep one eye on the night’s sky for any sign of UFOs, there’s the holdout that a film with such a title must have something great to show for itself.

It’s with no especial pleasure that I must admit: I don’t believe I’d call any one piece of The Greatest Showman great. Not the music, which, though considerably catchy at times, never insinuates claim to a lasting impression beyond the hour-and-a-half after viewing that “Never Enough” is guaranteed to be stuck in your head. Not the acting, which veers consistently cheeseball but too frequently without the proper self-effacing oomph. And not the story, which can’t seem to decide whom we should be celebrating and for what at any given point along the way.Thus, we’re left with a film that claims greatness, but has nothing great to show for itself. And yet, mathematics be damned, I’m hesitant to submit to the fact that The Greatest Showman isn’t, in fact, great.

Not especially impressive, inventive, or well-put-together, no. But great? Perhaps greatness can exist on its own accord. Perhaps the audacity to begin your movie with a hushed singing of line, “Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for,” commands a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps we hadn’t been waiting for such a moment, but perhaps we ought’ve.

Once that idea is lodged firmly in the hamlets of our brain that cause us to attend Christmas tree lightings, play the Hamilton lotto, and never quite give up on the mission to permeate the cat’s icy veneer, it sticks, assigning the remaining 104 minutes to follow the picture’s remarkably convincing opening platitude with the very same suggestion of grandeur. We’re told that P.T. Barnum’s (Hugh Jackman) determination to compensate for humble beginnings by dragging his family across the minefield of show business is a daring venture, so maybe it is! We’re told that the collection of “curiosities” that make up Barnum’s circus have, through their new employ, founded the very sanctuary that they’ve all long craved, so maybe they have! We’re told that Zac Efron can do upwards of 30 shots of straight liquor in a single dance number, so maybe he can!

The Greatest Showman insists on plenty, and assumes we’ll buy in to whatever it’s selling—an apropos mentality considering its focal hero, though without the spiritual acumen to grapple with the ramifications of such a blind trust. Particularly at the tail end of 2017, there’s something disconcerting about being asked to accept that just because a powerful and exploitative showman says he and the things he’s up to are great—or to accept that just because a movie about a powerful and exploitative showman says he and it and everything in between are great—that they must be.

In this case, though, we have the luxury of just an hour and 45 minutes of our time at stake. If you can get through the lot without at least coming close, even if only once or twice, to thinking, “Maybe this is great!” then truth be told, I don’t want to live in your brain.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Images: 20th Century Fox

Michael Arbeiter is the East Coast Editor for Nerdist. Find Michael on Twitter @micarbeiter.

More of our reviews!

• Read our super spoilery The Last Jedi review
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a different beast than its predecessor was
• Phantom Thread is a twisted, ugly, beautiful love story

The post THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is Indeed Great, Despite Not Being All That Good (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

Imagine you’re in Tokyo on business and you come across a gang of go-kart drivers dressed as characters from the popular Nintendo game Mario Kart. That would be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you in your life, right? Now imagine that you are also Hugh Jackman, star of such films as X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine, and Logan, and that, even with your impressive personal history, it’s still the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you. Imagine how much joy you would feel in that moment.

Such is the magic that Jackman brought to Twitter today, when he shot a quick video of a Mario Kart race while on the Japan leg of his Logan tour. His glee is truly infectious, and I’m going to have a very hard time not repeating “Bowser” to myself in an Australian accent over and over again for the rest of the day.

We’re here waiting for the green light and ohhhhh ….. #mariokart #supermariobros pic.twitter.com/zyI2eHv9rp

— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) May 24, 2017

The best part is that what Jackman stumbled upon wasn’t a flash mob or a weird miracle occurrence. It’s something that happens regularly in Tokyo thanks to MariCar, a company famous for its Mario Kart-inspired public go-kart tours. Although it might not be such a familiar sight in the future, unfortunately—according to Tokyo Weekender, Nintendo recently filed lawsuit on the grounds that that MariCar has been renting unlicensed versions of its characters, and that their name sounds too much like trademarked “Mario Kart.”

Still, even if MariCar falls off the Rainbow Bridge that is copyright infringement, at least Jackman will always have those memories of cheering on Mario and Luigi through the streets of Tokyo—and because he’s put them online, we’ll have those memories too. Plus all the ones from other people who’ve done the tours and posted them to YouTube, too:

Would you ever participate in a real-life Mario Kart race? Let us know in the comments below!

Featured Image: Nintendo

Is there hope for an X-Men/Avengers team-up movie?

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With Hugh Jackman retiring from the claws and sideburns of Wolverine after 17 years and nine films (yes, I’m counting the cameos), fans everywhere are already chomping at the bit to learn who will play the character next. After all, there is almost no way that Fox is letting this be the end of the character and name of Wolverine for good, no matter how associated Jackman is with the title role. But maybe Fox has their next Wolverine already, and she’s staring them right in the kisser. Yes, I’m referring of course to young Dafne Keen, who stole the show in Logan as Wolverine’s genetic offspring, X-23/Laura.

Now, as fans of the current Marvel Comics know, the Wolverine they know and love has been dead for just over two years. He’s been replaced by the older, grizzled Logan from the alternate future from the original Old Man Logan series, who refuses to call himself Wolverine or wear the classic costume. Who does wear the costume now is Laura Kinney, who has ditched her X-23 name and become the official Wolverine among the X-Men. So should the movies just wise up and follow suit?

Eventually, the entire X-Men universe as begun by Bryan Singer way back with that first movie 17 years ago will be rebooted, with a new Professor X, new Cyclops, and yes, a new Wolverine/Logan. But right now, Fox seems content to keep this version of the X-verse chugging along for a few more years, with a New Mutants movie, a potential Dark Phoenix Saga X-Men movie, plus Deadpool 2 and, eventually, X-Force. Not to mention the upcoming Fox TV series which is tied to the movie-verse as well. But Hugh Jackman won’t be a part of any of it, and recasting his iconic role within the confines of the same continuity would be too jarring.

I’ll say it: we need a Wolverine of some kind, so why not Laura?

Of course, there are obstacles to bringing the X-23 we know from the comics, who is usually portrayed as an older teenager, to the big screen anytime soon, starting with the fact that actress Dafne Keen is only 12 years old. The young actress was absolutely spectacular in the role, so do you recast with an older actress, in a film set even further in the future, leading her group of young mutant friends in the safety of Canada? (Alpha Flight anyone?) Or, do you wait a few years for Dafne to get older and become more like her comic book counterpart?

There is one solution that presents itself, and it allows Fox to have their mutant cake and eat it too — you have a follow up movie starring Dafne Keen as X-23, set immediately after the events of Logan. Then you have an older, recast version of Laura, now fully embracing the name and legacy of her “father” Wolverine, who time travels to the present (thanks to resident time-traveler Cable) and joins up with X-Force. In the comics, Laura has as much of a history with X-Force as she does with the regular X-Men, despite recently being a part of the All-New X-Men title. Besides, you need a Wolverine of some kind to play off against Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, so why not her? I can’t think of anyone better.

Another option, one straight from the comics, is to have Laura team up with Gambit, a character she spent a lot of time with in the pages of her own ongoing title. Together, they took on Mr. Sinister, a major X-Men villain that has been teased since the end tag of X-Men: Apocalypse, but who has yet to show up in the movie universe. The X-movies are having the hardest time it seems finding a proper way to introduce Channing Tatum’s Gambit into his own movie, so why not have him play a part in a Wolverine movie starring Laura first? And have Sinister be the antagonist in said movie, and kill two birds with one stone?

There’s no shortage of different ways to use the character of Laura Kinney as the new Wolverine in the Fox mutant movie-verse, and clearly it’s the studios best option until the eventual full-on reboot we all know is coming one day. Audiences the world over have clearly embraced the character of Laura, and just about everyone wants to see more of her. All that’s left is for Fox to get smart and pull the trigger on the female Wolverine movie we all deserve.

What do you think? Is X-23 ready to fill the role of Wolverine in the movies just as she has in the comics? Let us know in the comments below.

Images: Marvel Comics/ Twentieth Century Fox

X-23 might actually be more deadly than Wolverine…

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Last weekend, Logan arrived in theaters and delivered a powerful final turn for Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine. It’s already such a huge success at the box office that we wouldn’t be shocked to see future X-Men sequels take the Rated-R approach to superheroes. However, Logan does leave the fate of the team somewhat uncertain, and there could be a very dark future waiting for them if the story remains in continuity. Today’s Nerdist News is popping our claws into the clues about the fate of the mutants in Logan.

There are spoilers ahead for Logan. If you haven’t seen it yet, this is your chance to remain unspoiled. You’ve been warned!

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Join host, and latent mutant heroine, Jessica Chobot, as she pulls back the curtain on the Westchester incident that was referenced in Logan. Long time comic readers may recall that the Old Man Logan story by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven had a similar incident in which Wolverine was tricked into massacring the X-Men. This time, we think that the blame falls squarely on Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier. It seems clear to us that the Westchester incident was the first time that Xavier suffered a seizure, as seen in the film. But without Logan to sedate him in time, Xavier’s mental powers hurt or even killed some of their shared loved ones. Logan stays with Xavier out of a sense of loyalty, and because he may be the only one who could live through Xavier’s multiple seizures.

As things currently stand, Logan marks the end of the X-Men timeline that dates back to the ’60s in X-Men: First Class. Does that mean we’ll see the Westchester incident play out in a future film? As dark as that could be, we’re thinking that future X-Men directors will simply treat this story as a possible future. Deadpool exists outside of the rest of the mutant movies, so why can’t Logan do the same?

Where would you like to see the X-Men films go after Logan? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Images: 20th Century Fox

The post What Really Happened to All of the Mutants in LOGAN? appeared first on Nerdist.

Based on the enormous box office cash that it took in, to the tune of $85 million, most of you reading this have probably seen Logan, actor Hugh Jackman’s swan song to the character that made him a household name (and if you haven’t, you should totally get on that). Not only is it a fitting end to his unprecedented 17-year run as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, in which he made nine appearances as the character, but Logan is really just a great film, period. Possibly one of the best ever in the superhero genre.

Sure, the X-Men film series has had its ups and down over the years, with X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Origins: Wolverine being low points, but the one thing that was always perfect about them was Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine. One day, someone will replace him in the role, but that’s going to be quite a white tank top to fill. I don’t envy them.As a thank you to the fans who have supported him over this past decade and half, Jackman decided to display his gratitude to Wolverine-lovers with a video he released via Instagram. In the video, Jackman thanks his fans for “17 awesome years” and then shows a brief montage of Logan fan art. All of this is set to the tune of Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt,” the same song used for that first, great Logan trailer. You can watch the video down below:

Thank you. HJ

A post shared by Hugh Jackman (@thehughjackman) on Mar 5, 2017 at 10:35am PST

Logan is in theaters now, and stars Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, and Dafne Keen as X- 23.

What did you think of Logan? Is it as great as everyone says, or do you think it was better/worse? Let us know down below down in the comments.

Images: Twentieth Century Fox

He Wolverined pretty hardcore for you all.

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Let it never be said that Hugh Jackman is not committed to his craft. After 17 years of playing Wolverine, Jackman is bidding the character adieu in Logan. The film, which may be my favorite of the entire X-Men franchise, features a raw, emotionally devastated version of the character who is grappling with loss in the worst way possible: alcohol, rage, and regret. That berserker rage, in particular, was something that Jackman really wanted to bring to the forefront of Logan, and showcase it in a way that had never been seen before in an X-Men film. However, Jackman does not possess Wolverine’s healing factor in real life, and he pushed himself so hard during one take that he actually blacked out. It’s a terrifying but true story that Jackman told me when I sat down with him at a New York City press day.

In addition to speaking with Jackman about Wolverine’s last hurrah, I spoke with Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, and director James Mangold about their touching, triumphant film. In particular, we spoke about the freedom afforded by an R rating to make a film that isn’t necessarily for everyone. The superhero swan song is unlike any other X-Men movie to date; while it owes a great deal to its predecessors, it feels like a mature, thoughtful, and grown-up take on the classic character. Jackman was ably aided and abetted by the best possible scene partner, the inimitable Stewart as Professor X, who plays a version of the kindly mutant leader with an increasingly fragile mental state. What results is unexpected emotional devastation and catharsis, the end result of spending more than half my life with these men portraying two of the most iconic characters and seeing their journeys come to a satisfying conclusion.Logan is in theaters now. Read our review here, and watch our previous interview with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart reflecting on their first day on X-Men and their final day on Logan.

Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).

The post Hugh Jackman Wolverined So Hard in LOGAN That He Passed Out While Filming appeared first on Nerdist.

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Logan will be the big screen debut of X-23, the clone of Wolverine, and while she shares the adamantium claws, could she be even more dangerous? Kyle has the cutting edge science on this week’s Because Science!

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Seventeen years is a long time to spend with anyone—especially a hard-drinking rageaholic with Adamantium claws and a penchant for getting wrapped up in apocalypse-grade chaos. Contentious though his company may be, Hugh Jackman has managed almost two decades side by side with the Wolverine, allowing us the same luxury all the while.

Things have changed quite a bit since we were first introduced to Jackman’s take on the death-proof character back in Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000. Over the years, we’ve seen him fall in love, combat his own demons, travel through time, endure the elements of a Japanese POW camp, beat up Ryan Reynolds, and, in his latest entry, James Mangold’s Logan, contend with that very all-consuming legacy. Wolverine’s surrogate dad Charles Xavier, as immortalized by Patrick Stewart, has enjoyed no less the grandeur. Though Stewart has split duties with James McAvoy across the X-Men movie franchise, it is the elder actor whom we’ll always think of foremost when we consider the character’s cinematic stature.

As important as these characters may be to us, we’ve got to imagine that they hold all the more significant a place in the hearts of each of the men charged with bringing them to life on the big screen. Our own Dan Casey wanted to know just how the great Jackman and Stewart felt about saying goodbye to the Wolverine and Prof. X in Logan, not to mention how it felt to say hello to them in the first place. In the video above, Dan talks with the stars about their first days with the characters on the set of X-Men over 17 years ago, and their very last days with them at the wrap of this year’s Logan.

Fair warning: If these characters have meant anything at all to you—and we imagine they have—you’re bound to get a little misty here. Watch above and share your own feelings about what might just be the very ending of Logan’s and Charles Xavier’s stories as we know them.

Featured Image: 20th Century Fox

The post Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart Compare Their First Day on X-MEN to Their Last Day on LOGAN appeared first on Nerdist.

Whether you’ve seen every X-Men film three times over or Logan is your first big screen encounter with Marvel Comics’ legion of mutants, the newest entry in the franchise is bound to surprise you. It goes without saying that Hugh Jackman’s latest foray with his hot-tempered antihero Wolverine is unlike anything we’ve seen so far in the X-Men series; the film’s great achievement, though, is managing to stand out as unique against its fellow superhero movies across the board. How director James Mangold managed such an unusual piece of work, as he explained to our own Dan Casey during a conversation about the film, is in approaching Logan not as his take on the X-Men universe, but as an X-Men story filtered through his overarching cinematic vision. The results, I can tell you, are something to behold.

In talking to Mangold and stars Jackman and Patrick Stewart, who returns to the screen as the inimitable Prof. Charles Xavier, Dan looked into the specifics of what makes Logan feel so much like a beast all its own. Part of it, as Mangold expressed, is the hard R rating. As Jackman put it to Dan, “I wanted to hit the berserker rage like we hadn’t hit it before.” Not simply a gimmicky exploitation of excess bloodshed and multitudinous curse words, the upped dosage of violence and coarse language works to great effect toward a heightening of the stakes. (I’ve seen Wolverine stick his claws in and out of countless baddies over the past 17 years, and have never once felt as affected by the ritual as I did while watching Logan.)

Another component is, of course, the acting. Though Jackman and Stewart haven’t exactly been phoning it in all these years, there’s something striking and new to be found in their chemistry in Logan. As Jackman told Dan, “There’s more drama in that first scene between us than maybe all the other movies combined.” If their performances alone aren’t testament enough to how seriously Jackman and Stewart took this particular outing, the physical toll the film took on both men should hammer the point home. Stewart’s decision to drop 20 pounds for the role and Jackman’s fainting spell during one particular action scene account for nothing if not devotion.

There’s much more that went into making Logan such a special piece of work. Watch our interview with Mangold, Jackman, and Stewart (with a quick cameo from Boyd Holbrook, who plays the film’s silver-tongued villain) in the video above, and catch the film in theaters on March 3.

Featured Image: 20th Century Fox

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