It’s become fairly common knowledge at this point that Hugh Jackman’s days of playing Wolverine are numbered. Following the third standalone movie for the character, Jackman will be hanging up the claws. There’s still some time left between now and then however, and it looks like Jackman has some more scenes to shoot as Wolverine before he even gets to the last movie. He’s got some final work to do on X-Men: Apocalypsee first.
A number of the stars of the new movie will be traveling to Montreal shortly to do a number of reshoots for next summer’s X-Men film. The word from the Montreal Journal is that Jackman will likely be one of the people called back for these reshoots. The word is also in French, so be prepared for that. The reason for the reshoots is probably fairly standard. Some amount of reshooting is nearly always done because not every shot turns out as well as the filmmakers thought at the time and they just need to do another take. Sometimes reshoots are done to make massive changes to a film. That’s usually a bad sign, but there’s no indication that’s the case here.
The fact that Jackman was even in the new film was a fairly well guarded secret. It’s never really been officially stated to this point, but enough evidence has piled up that it does seem pretty clear. Exactly how large his role actually is, is hard to say. The fact that he’s being called back gives some indication that his role could be sizable, although it could just be that one of the few scenes he’s in ended up needing to be reshot for whatever reason. There are a lot of characters in the new film. Exactly how the movie will be balancing them all out is hard to tell.
Once X-Men: Apocalypse is done, there will only be the one movie left between Hugh Jackman and the character that he’s become synonymous with. The script for Wolverine 3 is currently being worked on and once Jackman is happy with it they’ll begin to work on the man’s swan song. Exactly what the plan for the character will be following that is unknown. There was talk at one time of Channing Tatum’s new Gambit movie coming in and taking the mantle as the primary character in the X-Men universe, but they have to make that movie first and they’re having a difficult enough time finding a director.
Hugh Jackman has often said that he loves playing Wolverine, even if he feels the need to move on from it, so he’ll likely enjoy his few extra days of unexpected performance. For the fans, it’s a stay of execution. Hugh Jackman is still Wolverine. All is right with the world.
