2 days Ago By Michael Hein
Marvel fans cannot imagine anyone else playing Wolverine on the big screen other than Hugh Jackman, even though we saw a new actor take on the part in Deadpool & Wolverine last summer. A surprising behind-the-scenes story reveals that we have Tom Cruise to thank for Jackman’s long tenure as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise. However, actor Dougray Scott was not thanking Cruise when he shared this little tidbit during an interview with The Daily Telegraph back in 2020.
The 59-year-old Scottish star revealed that he was actually the frontrunner for the role of Logan back in 1999, but his obligations to Mission: Impossible II got in the way. “Tom Cruise didn’t let me do it ,” Scott said bluntly while discussing his near-miss with the Wolverine role. “We were doing Mission: Impossible and he was like, ‘You’ve got to stay and finish the film.
’ 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.” Scott was a rising star at the time following some lauded performances in Ever After and Deep Impact . He played the main antagonist in M-I-2 , a rogue IMF agent named Sean Ambrose.
It helped grow Scott’s profile as an international actor at the time, and it remains one of the roles he is best known for today. Scott didn’t harbor any bitterness toward Jackman for missing out on the two-decade X-Men franchise. He said: “I love what Hugh did with it.
He’s a lovely guy.” Still, it goes without saying that a role like Wolverine would have been life-changing for anyone who took it at that time, with the momentum of superhero movies still building. For Jackman, X-Men was a major turning point.
The Australian actor had a successful career in musical theater and a handful of roles in Australian movies and TV shows before he was cast as Wolverine. At the time, he was considered a surprising choice for the role due to his relative obscurity and his reputation for musical theater — a far cry from the gruff, animalistic Logan. However, his success in the role made him an international superstar for years to follow.
Jackman played Wolverine in seven movies over the next two decades, culminating in the 2017 hit Logan . Although Jackman said he was finished with the role at the time, he returned just last year for Deadpool & Wolverine . The movie ended with plenty of room for Jackman to return, and while Marvel Studios has not formally announced any plans to feature him yet, the studio and Jackman have both encouraged this open-ended view.
Of course, if Scott had played Wolverine as planned, the butterfly effect tells us there’s no way of knowing how the superhero genre would have evolved since then. There are few characters who loom as large as Logan in big screen comic book adaptations, and re-casting him seems practically unthinkable to many viewers. Somewhere out in the multiverse, they feel the same way about Scott’s portrayal.
Scott has appeared in other comic book adaptations over the years. In 2016, he played Thomas Abigail in the second season of Fear the Walking Dead , and in 2019 he played Jacob Kane on the CW’s Batwoman . Scott was also in the running to play the next James Bond after Pierce Brosnan, and he has appeared in plenty of action movies since then.
So far we’ve never seen him in a superhero costume, but the way the MCU’s Multiverse Saga is dropping Easter eggs, it’s not entirely out of the question..
