By Fred Topel | Image property of 20th Century Fox.
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine
Surely all the scoopers posted Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine updates immediately following the junket for The Prestige. But only four people stayed to cover Jackman again for Flushed Away, so hopefully I’m the first one to publish these tidbits.
Hugh Jackman Talks Wolverine Details
Troy and 25th Hour screenwriter David Benioff is turning down offers from the likes of Steven Spielberg to write Wolverine, the X-Men prequel. Jackman is now a producer as well as a star, so he’s asserting his input over the character as well.
“With someone like David Benioff, you let him do his thing first off,” said Jackman. “He comes back with it and then we sit down together and I said to him, ‘I think this is fantastic. Maybe we’ll go a little in this direction, or what about this?’ He’s very collaborative and for better or worse, I played the role for three movies so it’s a character that I know, and I know what I want to achieve in the film.”
What Jackman wants to achieve sounds like a fan’s dream. “I don’t want the film to appear at all like X-Men 4 in disguise. I want it feel like a very fresh, whole new character piece. I want it to be a character movie and I really want to, by the end of the movie, for it to be definitive you knew who this guy was. Some cool action and some great characters but ultimately that you totally know who Wolverine is. And he really got that. He totally got it. David’s known for being one of the best character writers in Hollywood. So anyway, he’s been very collaborative and I’m not trying to tell him what I think and he’ll say that I disagree with you or whatever but it’s been a really terrific process so far.”
Doing a prequel means that Jackman will be playing Wolverine younger than he was six years ago in the first X-Men film. Something tells Jackman that we’ll buy it. “Well, he doesn’t age, right? We have to ask the audience to suspend their disbelief a little because I have aged. I’m not going to go and have surgery but I think that’s the beauty of playing that role. I won’t be able to do it when I’m 60, but I think for a few years I should be all right.”
More on The Prestige and Flushed Away coming soon.
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine 
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