Matthew Vaughn Reveals His Pick to Replace Hugh Jackman as Wolverine

In spite of rebooting 20th Century Fox’s floundering X-Men franchise in 2011, filmmaker Matthew Vaughn never got to recast the franchise’s most prominent character. A keen eye for talent and the seemingly limitless potential for superhero movies to make money helped Vaugh bring in heavy hitters like James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult as key players in his X-Men reboot/prequel, but the character of Wolverine appeared only for a cameo, and was played by original franchise actor Hugh Jackman. Given Wolverine’s power set — his healing factor makes him age extremely slowly — that certainly worked (and gave Jackman a chance to go out on the incredible high note of Logan), but who might Vaughn pitch if he had to recast the character?

Well, it’s names you probably recognize…both from fancasting of the role, and from Vaughn’s filmography. After all, is anyone surprised at this point that Taron Edgerton would be on his list?

“Well, he’s got older now, but I would say Tom Hardy would have…been awesome,” Vaughn told ComicBook. “I think Taron [Egerton] could do it in his sleep.  Aaron Taylor-Johnson could do it as well.  I mean, I think Aaron or Taron would be my first two choices could do it really well.”

While Vaughn did not stick around long with the X-Men franchise, he did go on to launch one of his own with Kingsman: The Secret Service. Its latest installment, The King’s Man, is also a prequel and is on the way to theaters on December 22.

The Kingsman prequel film The King’s Man is still headed to theaters, despite the numerous delays with its release. Still, 20th Century Studios wants moviegoers to know that The King’s Man is still coming, and to that end the studio has released a new set of character posters to introduce the new heroes and villains that The King’s Man will introduce to the franchise. That list includes Actors Ralph Fiennes and Harris Dickinson in the lead roles; Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Arterton, Tom Hollander and Matthew Goode in supporting roles as Kingsman agents, and Rhys Ifans as the WWI era villain, Rasputin. 

You can catch the film in theaters next week, where it will be competing with the annual glut of Christmas releases vying for consumer dollars, including Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Matrix Resurrections.