Is there anyone who can replace Hugh Jackman as WOLVERINE?

Discussing the right actors to play popular comic book characters is enough to get any comic book geek fired up in opinion. There is always regular debate over who plays the better Superman or Batman or Spider-Man (in my opinion, I’m still waiting for the right one) or even Hulk (it’s Eric Bana – just kidding). One comic book movie character who they seem to have got right early on is that of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I personally don’t think there has been a better casting for a comic book character yet than that of Jackman as the rebel that everybody loves in the X-men movies. So much so, that I honestly am not sure the 46-year old Jackman is even replaceable in the movies anymore.

And it seems I’m not the only one as director of the original X-Men movies and the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse Bryan Singer and producer Simon Kinberg, are also finding it challenging thinking of anyone else in the role, as they shared in an interview with Digital Spy:

For all the recasting that’s already gone on in the X-Men series, Singer and Kinberg were unanimous on one point: recasting Wolverine would be impossible. “I do think you would want to figure out how to tell more Wolverine stories,” Kinberg allowed. “So either we would try to entice Hugh to come back and eat more chicken and work out for a few months, or we would have to figure out a creative way to move forward. Honestly, I can’t imagine anybody else playing the part, and there’s not too many characters I can say that for

It was a given that he couldn’t play the role forever, but even though the studios have known this for a long time, there is just no one else that seems to resonate the attitude of the character as well as Jackman. It’s an issue that is faced with all comic book movies as they transition and reboot and have new actors cast in the roles, but they would have to close out the Jackman Wolverine story well to give viewers some closure and then try and do something completely different with the character to probably make any new actor attempt the role again. I also think if they do attempt another person in the role, they need to allow a lot of time for the change to feel right. It’s the same way I feel about Han Solo, but I guess Disney still feels they can pull off an origin story without Harrison Ford and if the X-Men brand ever moves back to the ownership of Marvel, they would probably look to reboot it with someone new.

Jackman’s planned last movie as Wolverine, a still-untitled collaboration with The Wolverine director James Mangold, is scheduled to hit theaters on March 3rd, 2017, unless 20^th Century Fox can pull something out of the bag to keep Jackman interested.

Is there anyone you think who could play the role of Wolverine or do we need to find some way of bestowing Wolverine powers into Jackman so he doesn’t age and can keep going on?

Last Updated: February 2, 2016