Wolverine is easily one of the biggest and most popular X-Men characters, seemingly on par with Spider-Man or Iron Man with his massive worldwide awareness.
One of the more interesting aspects of Wolverine was his sheer volume of crossovers during his comic book history, happening more often than you’d actually suspect.
While speaking with Collider, The Russo Brothers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War) revealed they’d love a crack at bringing in Wolverine into the Marvel cinematic universe.
JOE RUSSO: Wolverine.
ANTHONY RUSSO: Yeah.
JOE RUSSO: First favorite character growing up was Spider-Man, second was Wolverine. One of my most-prized possessions is Incredible Hulk #181. It was his first appearance.
Do you have it graded or is it just in your collection?
JOE RUSSO: It’s in my collection. It’s sitting in a safe. I won’t disclose where it is.
ANTHONY RUSSO: I know where it is. And I would say Wolverine as well, for all of the exciting reasons that we all gravitate to.
JOE RUSSO: As a comic book fan, you always think about any crossover. As filmmakers, we love ambitious storytelling; it’s one of the reasons we pushed to do Civil War. We want to be as ambitious in scope as we possibly can. That’s what appealed to me as a kid. Those are the sort of elemental concepts that motivated me to want to keep reading and read everything that I could in the comic book space. Crossover events are some of the most special events in comic book storytelling, so any kind of ambitious event story would appeal to us.
Let’s not take these statements lightly, the last time they were asked this question they said Spider-Man and they ended-up getting him for Civil War. The deal between Sony and Marvel is a game-changer, what’s impact on future Marvel films is completely unknown as it might be attractive for 20th Century Fox, as none of the X-Men event films as big as they are have broken the $700M mark. I think if you add the MCU cohesiveness into the conservation that could bump-up box office returns a lot.
Remember, these studios are in it to make money and Spider-Man: Homecoming is looking like it could be the highest grossing Spider-Man film to date, that’s only coming off the inclusion of Tony Stark in the film. There’s potentially other MCU connections or characters that could be added to the film in the coming months. I’m sure Fox is keeping their eyes closely onto that collaboration.
Just a couple weeks ago, we had X-Men franchise producer Simon Kinberg and Deadpool director Tim Miller talking about their hope to bridge the two Marvel cinematic universes one day. They brought-up their close relationship with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige as reason why it could happen. Miller giving his own shout-out to Feige with a fun pizza box graphic in Deadpool.
KINBERG:
“I think we all would, and I think there’s so much crossover in the comic it would be neat to one day see those characters share a movie. It would be fun to all team up [Fox and Marvel] one day, somehow, together, if that would work.”
“Both of us are actually quite close with Kevin,“ Simon Kinberg says, “and have a profound amount of respect for what he does. And it would be fun to all team up one day, somehow, together, if that could work.”
MILLER:
“But I would love to, someday, in part, heal the rift between the world of X-Men and the world of Avengers.”
Lauren Shuler Donner, another X-Men producer who worked alongside Feige on the first couple X-Men films revealed years ago her own openness to a crossover, it really comes down to 20th Century Fox having the open-mind towards making a deal.
Here’s what she had to say about an X-Men/Avengers crossover when asked by Crave Online back in 2012.
“I would love it. I would love it. I personally have close ties to Marvel because of Kevin Feige, because Kevin worked for me. But to take our characters and mingle them in the way that they were written, yeah, absolutely.”
Hugh Jackman is unlikely to still have the role if Marvel and Fox were to reach a deal. You might remember that Andrew Garfield was systemically recast as Marvel’s Spider-Man, needing to . Athlough, Jackman has been a huge champion of the studios finding common ground to make it happen. He admitted last year if or when that deal was made he might have already left the role behind him.
We’ve been speculating what needs to happen for this to come together and it seems to be Fox retiring Wolverine in their cinematic universe, which looks like could be the case in Wolverine 3 with rumors that Laura Kinney aka X-23 could potentially takeover the mantle if he dies in the final solo film.
Recently, it was confirmed that both Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 will be getting title changes, likely to remove itself from the part two aspect. It’s been revealed the two Avengers films will be shot back-to-back, but will in fact be standalone movies.
Carol Danvers is said to be playing a role in those two films and if they were able to also include an MCU version of Wolverine I think fans would go bananas for it. Infinity War or whatever they end-up calling those movies is a perfect launching platform to slide Wolverine or other X-Men into the mix.
Inhumans has recently been pulled off the official release schedule at Disney, which gave more than a few people pause to speculate that project was getting the axe entirely, possibly to make room for an MCU take on the X-Men instead. I haven’t seen any evidence of this, but Marvel had been calling it their own version of the X-Men and oddly doesn’t seem too concerned about it’s production priority at the moment.
It’s only an interesting what-if at the moment, but wheels could already be in motion.
Would you like to see Wolverine show-up in Avengers films or the MCU to finally start figuring out how to include mutants into the fold?
SOURCE: COLLIDER