Hugh Jackman almost didn't play Wolverine

The X-Men film franchise celebrates its 20 year anninversary on July 14. Over the years while many actors have come and gone, Hugh Jackman that played the role of Wolverine has been around until very recently. Starting of with the first film as an ex-supersoldier who as an amnseia to an aging veteran coming to terms with his own mortality, Hugh Jackman has owned the Wolverine character to the point that it has become unfathomable to imagine someone else in the role. As succh when he finally bid aideue to the character in 2017's Logan fans were left with a bittersweet moment.

However all this is a product of mere chance considering, Jackman wasn't originally meant to play the role. In fact he was  a last-minute replacement for Scottish actor Dougray Scott. Scott had already been confirmend for the role and was set to play it once he got done with   filming Mission: Impossible II, reported Hindustan Times. He was supposed to jump onto X-Men immediately after finishing the film, but due to production delays, M:I 2 got pushed, and 20th Century Fox, which was depending heavily on the success of X-Men, could no longer wait for him and cast the relatively unknown Jackman as his replacement.

“The shoot has gone longer than expected, and Scott lost a few days with a shoulder injury,” a Variety report from 2000 said. Director Bryan Singer had even pushed Wolverine’s scenes till a later date to accommodate Scott’s schedule, but it didn’t work. The report continued, “Even though X-Men had begun production late last month, Fox was holding out hope until the last minute that Paramount would be able to give a stop date for Scott on M:I:2 so he could join the cast in Toronto this week. In the whirlwind casting change, Jackman’s deal was finalized late last week so he could be fitted for his claws over the weekend. He will begin rehearsals and action choreography today.”

In a recent interview to the Daily Telegraph, Scott put the blame squarely on Tom Cruise. “Tom Cruise didn’t let me do it,” he said. “We were doing Mission: Impossible and he was like, ‘You’ve got to stay and finish the film’ and I said I will, but I’ll go and do that as well. For whatever reason he said I couldn’t. He was a very powerful guy. Other people were doing everything to make it work.”

Meanwhile Jackman had revealed earlier that after being offered the role after nine months he was on the brink of getting fired.“Five weeks into shooting X-Men, I was on the verge of getting fired...” Jackman said during one of his Hugh Jackman. The Man. The Music. The Show appearances in London. “The head of the studio pulled me aside at lunch and he told me that they were worried at the studio, that they weren’t seeing on camera what they’d seen in the audition.”

He continued, “And the very next day the director pulled me aside and told me exactly the same thing. So clearly they’d been talking and I was freaking out. I’m thinking, oh, this is the talk you get before you get fired. And this was the biggest break of my career by a mile up to this point.”

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