When Ryan Reynolds pitched Kevin Feige the idea to bring Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Marvel Studios boss made one important condition: Put him in yellow. As Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy described the meeting during the press junket in Shanghai, China, that was the beginning of the epic team-up.
“He said, ‘Yes, but he wears the yellow. Can he finally wear the yellow?'” Levy said (per ComicBook.com). “And we began.”
Since his early days as an associate producer on 2000’s X-Men, Feige was one of the few voices pushing to make big-screen Marvel Comic adaptations close to the source material. In a Vanity Fair piece in 2017, Feige revealed he was responsible for going to Jackman’s hair stylist to suggest capturing Wolverine’s signature hairstyle.
Though Jackman wore leather outfits and street clothes throughout his X-Men run at Fox, the classic yellow and brown costume was teased in a deleted scene in 2013’s The Wolverine. Sadly for Marvel fans upon Jackman’s swan song in 2017’s Logan, it seemed as if the comic-accurate costume would be saved for a new actor.
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Among those sad fans, however, was Reynolds himself. Discounting their misguided collaboration in 2009’s X-Men: Origins: Wolverine, the Deadpool star and close friend of Jackman had longed to see the Merc with the Mouth team up with Wolverine on the big screen. Initially, Feige had doubts until fate intervened as Reynolds recalled the pitch meeting for the third Deadpool installment following Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox:
“I had met Kevin Feige six years ago to discuss this, and the first thing I said to him was, ‘I just want to make Wolverine and Deadpool together. I just want these two together on screen.’ At the time, Kevin said, ‘Forget it. It’s never going to happen.’ And I said, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ As we marched inexorably forward, Shawn and I were coming up with different pitches and different ideas, and we pitched Marvel everything you could imagine — little movies, big movies, anything — and it wasn’t working out.”
“And then one day, we were on our last pitch. We were about to say to Kevin Feige, ‘I think we’re going to walk away and we’ll come back later, maybe in a couple years, when we have a better sense of things.’ And Hugh happened to call me. Shawn and I just pivoted in the middle of our pitch to Kevin and said, ‘Look, this thing just happened. It seems kind of miraculous. Hugh called me, what do you say?’ And for some reason, Kevin immediately said yes.”
What do you think of Hugh Jackman slipping into the classic yellow costume in Deadpool & Wolverine? Let us know in the comments below.
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