Keanu Reeves Wants to Play Wolverine

Over the course of his career in Hollywood, Keanu Reeves has played no shortage of bad ass heroes, but he’s yet to play a superhero. Now he has his sights set on a key member of the X-Men with a role that was recently vacated by Hugh Jackman.

While speaking with ScreenGeek alongside Alice Eve about their upcoming film Replicas, Reeves revealed that he would love the chance to play Wolverine in a big Marvel movie.

Reeves was asked about his previous comments about wanting to play either Wolverine or Batman, when he said, “Of the two, I’d love to play Wolverine.”

Jackman “retired” from playing Wolverine after the release of Logan, much to Deadpool actor Ryan Reynold’s chagrin. But with Disney getting set to acquire 20th Century Fox and their intellectual properties, it’s unclear what their plans are for the future of the X-Men franchise.

Fox has one movie left on the docket with X-Men: Dark Phoenix set to release in theaters in 2019, likely wrapping up the long-running series that began with the first X-Men movie from 2000.

Jean Grey actress Sophie Turner has spoken about the impending purchase, expressing uncertainty if she will continue playing the role beyond the next X-Men movie.

“I don’t know. I feel the complexities of the X-Men being shunned by society and segregated is not something that happens in the Avengers universe,” Turner told EW. “Of course, I want to see them crossover but I don’t think the themes through X-Men will collaborate well with the Avengers. It’ll be very different. If they do it, I’d love to see how it turns out.”

Writer and director Simon Kinberg previously spoke about the tone of the film and how it ushers in a new beginning for the franchise.

“I see it as a new chapter,” Kinberg said at CCXP in Brazil. “I see it as taking the franchise in a different direction tonally. And that doesn’t mean that the next one will have the same tone, it just means that the next one can have a different tone. I think for many years, the X-Men, Bryan [Singer] really transformed the superhero genre in 2000 or 2001 when the first one came out. That’s almost 20 years ago. It is a long time ago. And at that time, superhero movies were not wildly popular, actually. There had been a few failures in the mid-90s, and there hadn’t been a lot of superhero movies, if any, around that time and X-Men sort of was revolutionary in its moment.”

We’ll see if there’s room for a new Wolverine after X-Men: Dark Phoenix premieres in theaters on June 7, 2019.